The colours at the galaxy’s centre, which is extremely bright, were well controlled, and this allowed the natural colours of the dust lanes to shine through. Hints of star-forming regions showed up as reddish purple, while star clusters and groupings were picked out in remarkable detail. Next, if the skies allow it, we can go on to experiment with other settings.Ī cropped image of M31 taken with the AA24CFX camera and a Sky-Watcher Esprit 150ED refractor, using 3 hours of 10’ and 15’ exposures.
To ensure that we can get some usable images for a review we normally start off by using low gain, which gives us a predictable and useful point of reference. The AA24CFX is a CMOS camera that offers a range of gain settings. These results demonstrate how well the 24MP sensor produces the smooth transfer of large amounts of data.
#HYPERCAM 2 PL FULL#
Naturally, this large camera isn’t designed for fast frame-rate applications like planetary imaging, but we were getting about 5fps in full frame, 14-bit mode, and up to 15fps with a smaller region of interest setting. Once running we turned on the thermoelectric cooling (TEC) system and let the camera stabilise for a few minutes, allowing it cool down to a sensible –10☌.Įven with such a large chip, the USB 3.0 connection is a speedy interface, and we used live focusing with a steady frame rate to ensure good focus.
It is worth noting that the AA24CFX requires a 12V DC power supply a basic PSU (power supply unit) with a mains plug is provided in the package, but for convenience we were also able to run it using our observatory’s 12V supply.