Description

Player One Apollo-M USB3.0 Mono Camera IMX174

Focus on Solar imaging!

Apollo series is the world’s first camera line designed specifically for solar photography, named after Apollo. The Apollo series features Sony sensors with global shutters and a focus on monochrome sensors.

Apollo-M is a solar camera developed by Player One Astronomy, which adopts the Sony IMX174 1 1.2” format monochrome sensor. The 5.86um pixel size accommodates a well depth of 32Ke with a total of 2.3MP  (the resolution is 1944*1216), and the diagonal is 13.3mm.

Pregius Technology

Apollo-M (IMX174) and Xena-M (IMX249)  based on Pregius 1st Gen, it was a gaint leap in CMOS sensor development. IMX174 and IMX249 has same performance, the only difference is IMX174 is faster (164FPS) .

Format

Apollo-M (IMX174) has 1 1.2″ format, this size is between Apollo-M MAX (IMX432) and Apollo-M MINI (IMX429).

Recommended accessories:

ACS (Active Cooling System)

ACS is a external air-cooled system, designed for solar and big format planetary cameras which already has PCS (Passive Cooling System). ACS can provide much better temperature control. When camera has PCS + ACS, temperature is only 7℃ higher than ambient, camera body is a little warm but won’t hot! ACS is not only can be used in daylight for solar imaging, it also could be used in night for DSO lucky imaging.

Photosphere 10nm filter

For better contrast in White light, Photosphere 10nm filter will be a good choice. it has 10nm bandwidth and CWL is 540nm.

ERF filter

Introduce new 1.25″ ERF filter for Quark Chromosphere (Ha verstion) , intend to reject energy and extend life time of your Quark.

2nd Gen – Sensor Tilt Plate

When taking solar photograph with prominence telescope, the Newton ring is annoying. Smoother solar image without Newton ring could be taken by adjusting the focal plate. 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.

Passive Cooling System

Solar cameras working in daylight, temperature could be much higher than night. Heat of global shutter sensors will be a problem, especially some big format like IMX432. Player One add a new feature called Passive Cooling System to conduct the heat from the sensor out.

256M DDR3 Cache

Player One Astronomy cameras are the first one who adpots 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 readnoise.

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.