I am considering the purchase of a QHY8L for my Edge HD 1100. I wanted to see if there are any other users using this camera with SGP and if there are any major issues. I have seen some older post where people expressed issues with the cooling, but not sure if that is consider a problem any more. If there are any owners of the QHY8L out there that would like to share their experience with using it with SGP it would be appreciated.
Also, any real difference between the QHY8L vs QHY8Pro when it comes to imaging with SGP?
I have to disclose I am a QHY vendor first, Astrofactors. I personally use a QHY12 and QHY8Pro on a Edge C11 with SGpro no problem. The only difference between the 8L and 8Pro besides money is the 8Pro uses progressive scan instead of interlace. All the newer Snoy chips use the interlace scan. Interlace scanning can cause a very slight green gradient that is easily removed with dark frames… Bruce Morrell
I use a QHY8L with SGP and have done for quite a while and the camera works perfectly with SGP, I have noticed no strange behaviour with ref to cooling and I don’t think I have ever experienced a disconnection while hooked up to SGP.
One thing I will say is that when you first turn on cooling in the SGP interface the camera wants to whack cooling power up to 50%, the power % in the cooling module will start at 1% and progressively rise up until it hits 50% before full control is gained. This is built into the drivers and not a fault with SGP though. I have the older single TEC version whereas the current one is a dual TEC version. I usually operate at approx. 20-25c below ambient and once the temp is stable there the power usually hovers around 27% so you can understand why I get a little nervous with it’s wanting to shoot to 50% power what with the possibilities of thermal shock & all.
This only happens once on initial connection and cooling turned on though. To counteract this situation, before turning on cooling, I note the sensor temp shown in the Cooling module, add a couple of degrees and place this figure in the ‘Set To’ box and set the time to 2 mins. On clicking cooling to ‘ON’ I immediately click the ‘Set’ button, This starts a Warming cycle and the power % doesn’t usually pass 10-15% before SGP is bringing the power back down again. once the power is back to 1% everything will operate perfectly. I will then begin the actual cooling cycle when I am good & ready.
I’m using the camera with an F4 newt so it is quite a wide field of view, my pixel scale is approx. 1.58 and even though I am relatively new to all this and also trying to solve an issue with my flats, I managed a test session:-
I’m quite chuffed with the test result, the exposure time for the subs was only 1 min 30 seconds and it should have been at least 3 mins per frame but time constraints dictated the lower sub time. x30 subs were captured in this session. The worst defect being the rather nasty reflection near the Reaper himself as a result of the very bright star. This image was outputted from Pixinsight (I’m very new to Pixinsight) at about 50% resolution and as a .JPG which is never optimum format for quality but then again, it was only a test.
If you click the attached image and click it again when the box opens up then that will be the full size of my image, bare in mind though that the full size of ‘THIS’ image is only 50% size of my original Fits which the camera put out.
I use a qhy8l and dont have any problems with sgpro.I dont bother with any pre cooling i just run the sequence and have - 20 set over ten mins and warm up over ten mins
Hello again. I actually decided to go with the QHY10 as the dealer I purchased from had it on sale for approximately the same price as the QHY8Pro. I really wanted the progressive scan vs the the interlaced scan as I may wish to use this camera for broadcasting on NSN by using Astrotoaster or ShareCap to stack the images as they come in. Plus the QHY10 has a slightly wider FOV.
I have a follow on question. Is there anyone here using the QHY8L/Pro or the QHY10 with a 11 inch SCT or similar? I am planning on using QHY10 on my Edge HD 1100 with the 0.7x Focal Reducer which will give me an image resolution of about 0.64" per pixel (about the same as my Canon 6D). At the moment I will be using the camera at prime focus rather than using the Hyperstar as I would have to completely redo my guiding solution if I go with the Hyperstar (currently using an ONAG for guiding). I am just curious how this camera works with longer focal length OTAs.
