The QHY 247C Pro is a cooled colour camera with large pixels and low noise. It contains the Sony IMX 193, an APS-C sensor which is also used in the Nikon D5300 and D5500 DSLR cameras. The QHY 247C camera has the lowest read and thermal noise among the 165/168/247/367 cameras.
Unlike the DSLR cameras, the QHY 247C Pro offers true RAW image output that only records the signal. Standard DSLR's have the RAW output option but the file is altered with noise reduction and hot pixel removal, undermining the maximum post processing flexibility.
This camera has a two-stage TEC cooling system that brings the temperature of the sensor 35C° below ambient for low noise imaging, even in warm climates. The dark current at -15°C is only 0.0012 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 247C 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 in other processes.
In order to avoid halos around bright stars, the QHY 247C has an AR coated optical window on both sides rather than the common IR/UV cut window. Also, the protection glass of the sensor is AR coated to maximize light transmission and minimize internal reflections. For a better RGB colour balance, it is recommended to use a UV/IR cut filter.
Every QHY 247C Pro camera is carefully calibrated with a high-precision axis measurement device. Orthogonal placement of the sensor in the camera body is guaranteed to be flat to the image plane with a precision better than +/-20µm across the sensor, from edge to edge, so there is no need to adjust the camera tilt. That is an enormous advantage especially in fast telescopes such as F/2.8-F/4 astrographs that are very sensitive to tilted sensors.
The QHY 247C has zero amplifier glow no matter how long the exposure is.