The QHY 163M Pro is a cooled monochrome camera that contains the Aptina MN34230. It has a medium size 16 Mpx sensor with a diagonal of 22.2mm. The pixels have a size of 3.8 µm which is an excellent value for telescopes with different focal lengths.
This camera has a two-stage TEC cooling system that brings the temperature of the sensor 35/40C° below ambient for low noise imaging, even in warm climates. The dark current at -20°C is only 0.006 electron/pixels. In addition to thermoelectric cooling, QHYCCD employs a unique thermal noise control technology to reduce CMOS sensor noise to a very low value without affecting the integrity of the raw image. The QHYCCD proprietary technology produces a much better noise reduction than any other astronomy camera in the market. QHYCCD has more than 10 years of experience designing cooled cameras. The QHY 163M employs a full anti-dew technology for both CCD sensor cover glass and the sensor chamber optical window.
The 128MB DDR II memory buffer facilitates the download of images to the computer, especially when USB traffic is high, the writing speed of your computer is slow or occupied with other processes.
In order to avoid halos around bright stars, the QHY 163M has an AR coated optical window on both sides rather than the common IR/UV cut window. For a better RGB colour balance, it is recommended to use a UV/IR cut filter.
The QHY 163M has zero amplifier glow no matter how long the exposure is.