Design for planetary imaging and EAA!
Now, a new member join in Mars series, its name is Mars-C II (IMX662) camera. Uranus-C and Mars-C II is not only for planetary imaging, but also very powerful for EAA!
Product Description
Mars-C II (IMX662) is a planetary camera developed by Player One Astronomy, which adopts the newest Sony IMX662 1/2.8” format sensor. The 2.9um pixel size accommodates a well depth of 54ke with a total of 2.1MP (the resolution is 1936*1100), and the diagonal is 6.44 mm.
STARVIS 2 Technology
Mars-C II (IMX662) and Uranus-C (IMX585) based on Sony newest STARVIS 2 technology, it is back-illuminated pixel technology used in CMOS image sensors.
Format
Mars-C II (IMX662) has 1/2.8″ format, this size is quite suitable for planetary imaging.
Extend Full Well Capacity
Mars-C II (IMX662) has 54Ke full well, it’s almost 4.5 times than IMX462 (13Ke).
Highlights
Non-Amp-Glow
Biggest supprise of Mars-C II (IMX662) camera is, its dark frame is totally “dark”, whatever we strength the curve, there is no AMP glow at all!
300s dark frame of Mars-C II camera(full size):
Non-Amp-Glow can give us very clean background, much easier to get high quaility images. Mars-C II camera also very good for lunar and planetary imaging.
User works appreciation
Jupiter,Saturn,Mars-John Gleason,Astro-Physics 254mm Mak-cass, Mars-C II
Jupiter-Jim Lafferty,Ganymede and IO C11 XLT , Mars-C II camera
Saturn-Don-Tom,C925-2x-Mars-C-II-camera
Jupiter, John Gleason, 10inch MCT + Mars-C II
Saturn, John Gleason, 10inch MCT + Mars-C II
Jupiter, Dan Llewellyn, C14 + Mars-C II
Saturn-John-Molders,180MCT-Mars-C-II
Features:
The naming of Player One Astronomy cameras is unique. For example, we name the planetary cameras after planets (They are Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, Earth is not included). The size of each planet to a certain extent represents the size of camera sensors. We will name Saturn with a 1-inch sensor camera, and for Mars, we will name it with a ½.8 inch sensor camera. All names will be engraved on the housing of the cameras.
Drivers and softwares download: http://player-one-astronomy.com/service/software/
Manuals download: http://player-one-astronomy.com/service/manuals/
Cutting-edge Design
The planetary cameras developed by Player One Astronomy uses a scientific and technological regular hexagon to construct the main body line, supplemented by round chamfers to achieve both rigidity and flexibility. The positive red, which is like a summer fire, is matched with the low-key and steady black, and the super-fine frosting process on the entire surface makes the camera look luxurious and cool, highlighting the style of high-end players, can’t take my eyes off 😀
2nd Gen – Sensor Tilt Plate
When taking deepsky objects, using sensor tilt plate can get a much smaller field curvature of the telescope.
The built-in high-density sponge shading pad can block the light from the side slits without any side leakage.
256M DDR3 Cache
Player One Astronomy cameras are the first one who adopts the DDR3 cache in all planetary cameras in the world! It helps stabilize and secure data transmission, it effectively avoids frame dropping and greatly reduces readout noise.
With the DDR3 cache, the camera does not have high demands on computing needs any longer, it will still has excellent performance even if it is connected to a USB 2.0 port.
DPS technology
The planetary cameras from Player One Astronomy have DPS (Dead Pixel Suppression) technology. The DPS is anaylse many dark frames to find out thoes fixed abnormal pixel and record the map in camera memory. In imaging, each exposure frames, thoes position of dead pixels will be given a median value according to the active pixels around that abnormal pixel.
Overvoltage and overcurrent protection mechanism
Player One cameras produced by us ensures the safety of your camera and other equipment through overvoltage and overcurrent protection mechanisms.
Data Port
When the camera is connected to the USB3.0 interface and full-resolution preview is used, it can reach 107 FPS in RAW8 mode (10bit ADC). When recording images, since the actual writing speed will be affected by the writing speed of the hard disk itself, when the hard disk writing speed is slow, the recording may not reach the theoretical speed. It is recommended that you use a high-quality solid state drive to record data to give full play to the performance of the camera.
Use the ST4 guide cable to connect the camera and the AUTO GUIDE port of the equatorial mount to do guiding.
Performance
HCG open at gain=210.
Readout Noise
Regarding readout noise, we solemnly promise that all values are obtained from actual tests. And for users, you could use Sharpcap 4 for testing. SC4 has a function called Sensor Analysis, provide a very simple way to test readout noise.
We wrote a tutorial on our website: https://player-one-astronomy.com/service/manuals/
If you are interested in readout noise testing, you may try it yourself, which is very simple.
QE Curve
This relative QE curve is provided by SONY Co., Ltd. This data is authentic and authoritative!
Mechanical Drawing
Adam Smith –
The format looks good for planetary imaging, maybe also can imaging some planetary nebula. I’m thinking about to upgrade my Mars-C camera with it or directly upgrade to Uranus cam.
Player One Astronomy –
That’s right, it’s a upgrade verstion of IMX462. Uranus has bigger format.