The QHY 410C Pro is a top performing cooled camera. It contains the Sony IMX 410 back illuminated sensor, the same sensor that is used in the Sony A7III as well as the Nikon Z6. It has very large pixels with a size of 5.94µm and the full well capacity at 120,000 e- reduces the risk to overexposing the frame. Unlike DSLR cameras, the QHY 410C Pro offers true RAW image output that only records the signal without artefacts. 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 capabilities and final quality of the image.
This camera has a two-stage TEC cooling system that brings the temperature of the sensor 35C° below ambient for a low noise imaging, even in warm climates. The dark current at -20°C is only 0.002 electron/pixels/second. 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 410C employs a full anti-dew technology for both CCD sensor cover glass and the sensor chamber optical window.
The 1 Gbyte 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 410C 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 410C 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. This 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 410C has zero amplifier glow no matter how long the exposure is.