QHY 461M-PH MEDIUM FORMAT CAMERA

The QHY461M-PH is a medium format, high resolution cooled astronomy camera, featuring the Sony IMX461 back-illuminated CMOS sensor with 102 megapixels. Featuring a native 16-bit ADC, ultra-low read noise of 1e- at high gain and extremely low dark current, the QHY461 is perfect for professional and research applications or series amateur imaging (when matched with a suitably corrected telescope).

The QHY461M-PH has a 11760 x 8896 pixel array with 3.76μm pixels. The sensor size is 44mm x 33mm with a diagonal of 55mm, therefore an observatory-class telescope such as a Planewave CDK is recommended. The sensor can be binned to increase sensitivity and full-well capacity. At bin 2 x 2, the standard 50ke- with 3.76μm pixels becomes a staggering 320ke- at 7.5μm. The QHY 461M-PH can be considered a modern version of the classic KAF16803 cameras.

The camera has two-stage TEC cooling capable of 35 degrees below ambient. Its 1GB DDR3 memory buffer is especially useful for situations where USB traffic is high, the writing speed of your computer is slow or is occupied with other processes.

The QHY461 has only one electron of read noise at high gain and 1.3FPS (16-bit), 2.7FPS (8-bit) high readout speed. One electron of read noise means the camera can achieve a SNR>3 at only 3 to 4 photons. This is perfect performance when conditions are photon limited, i.e. short exposures, narrow band imaging, etc., making this large area sensor ideal for sky surveys and time domain astronomy. At low gain the read noise is still only 3.7e-.

Being a scientific camera, the QHY461 allows the user access to the various readout modes of the sensor in order to provide the maximum flexibility and usability of the camera in a wide variety of imaging applications. Currently there are 4 readout modes (more may be activated in the future). Different readout modes result in different Behavior in full well, read noise and some other conditions.