Moravian C1-1500 Monochrome CMOS CCD Camera

Description

Moravian CCD’s are custom selected – please contact us for latest pricing & availability – with thanks.

Moravian C1-1500 Monochrome CMOS CCD Camera

The C1 series CMOS cameras are designed as small, lightweight imagers ideal for Moon and planet imaging and well-suited for functioning with telescope guiding. When it comes to deep-sky imaging these provide great results as well— especially for the entry-level astronomer. The reasonably low price of these cameras if perfect for the imager just starting out or even the veteran looking for an easy and convenient camera.

These Moravian C1 CMOS cameras are equipped with Sony IMX CMOS detectors with 3.45 x 3.45 μm square pixels. The models in this series differ only in resolution, each adapted for 1.25″ connections.

Technical data :

CMOS Sensor : IMX273

Resolution : 1.5 Megapixels – 1456 X 1099 pixels

Pixel size : 3.45 x 3.45 uM

Image area : 5.02mm x 3.75mm

PC FUNCTIONALITY

This camera series functions with a host Personal Computer (PC) running a modern Windows operating system.

Also compatible with Linux systems, but the provided SIPS camera control and image processing software require Windows. Apple Macintosh computers have limited compatibility and only with certain software packages on an x64 system.

A USB 3.0 is the main interface connection operating at 5 Gbps but these are also compatible with USB 2.0.

Alternatively, it is possible to use the “Gx Camera Ethernet Adapter” device. This device can connect up to four Cx (with CMOS sensors) or Gx (with CCD sensors) cameras of any type and offers 1 Gbps and 10/100 Mbps Ethernet interface for direct connection to the host PC. Because the PC then uses TCP/IP protocol to communicate with the cameras, it is possible to insert a WiFi adapter or other networking device to the communication path.

These are powered through the USB connection from the host PC

CAMERA ELECTRONICS

The Moravian C1 camera series offers two read modes, which are:

• Fast 8-bit mode with more than 100 MPx/s digitization speed (5 MPx image from C1-5000 is downloaded in less than 0.05 s). The number of bytes transferred to the PC equals the number of pixels.
• Slightly slower (but still very fast) 12-bit mode with ~80 MPx/s digitization speed (5MPx image from C1-5000 is downloaded in ~0.06 s). Every pixel then occupies 2 bytes (1 word), only the upper 4 bits of every word is always zero.

Download times noted above are with USB 3.0 connection.

These cameras are able to do extremely short exposures with the shortest being 125 μs (1/8000 of a second), and long exposures with essentially no limit as it’s controlled by the host PC.

The sensor response to light is perfectly linear. This means the camera can be used also for entry-level research projects, like for instance photometry or brighter variable stars, etc…

SENSOR COOLING

The Moravian C1 Series Cameras are equipped with a small fan to exchange air inside and out of the body with a small heatsink directly located on the sensor.

PLEASE NOTE the C1-1500 model does not have a heat sink, as the sensor is too small to support this.

So, the C1 sensor cannot be cooled below the ambient temperature, but its temperature is kept as close to the environment as possible. Compared to closed designs, the sensor temperature in the C1 camera can be up to 10°C lower and the resulting dark current may be less than half.

The included software can be used to moderate the internal cooling fan.

AUTOGUIDER PORT

C1 cameras were designed specifically with automatic mount guiding in mind. Through the aforementioned short exposure times, this camera series excels as an autoguider camera capable of obtaining thousands of images in a very short time. One thing to note is that guiding corrections are not automatically calculated in the camera itself, instead, these acquired images are sent to the PC.

The maximum sinking current of each pin of the C1 camera is 150 mA. If the mount does not treat the autoguider port as logical input only but switches the guiding motors directly by these signals, a relay box must be inserted between the camera and the mount.

SOFTWARE

Software and driver support of the Cx series CMOS cameras is as rich as is the case of their Gx series CCD camera siblings.

However, latest versions of all software packages and drivers has to be installed to use Cx cameras.

• If the C1 camera is connected directly to host PC using USB cable, a new system driver CxCamera.sys must be installed (see the “Installing and Using Drivers and Software” manual, shipped with every camera). The system driver pre-installation package version 2.0 and later contains this driver.
• When the C1 camera is connected through the Camera Ethernet Adapter device, the device should be updated to firmware version 34 or later to work with CMOS cameras (see the “Ethernet Adapter User’s Guide” for firmware update procedure).

• Linux driver packages and libraries must be upgraded to latest versions, too. See the Download section of this site for details.

The SIPS (Scientific Image Processing System) software package version 3.11 or later is necessary to control C1 cameras.

C1 camera drivers for 3rd party software packages also need to be updated to work with C1 cameras. Minimum versions for respective drivers are:

• ASCOM drivers version 4.3
• Drivers for TheSkyX (all versions for Windows, MacOS and Linux) version 2.0
• Astroart drivers version 3.0

SPECIFICATIONS