Australian Sky & Telescope - April 2018

66 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE April 2018

ALL PHOTOS BY THE AUTHOR

The QHY16200A CCD camera

This camera offers a generous 16-megapixel field at an attractive price.

ROUGHLY A DECADE AGO, ON

Semiconductor (formerly Kodak)

introduced the KAF-8300 CCD

detector widely used in astronomical

cameras. This 8.3-megapixel, 18 ×

14 mm sensor offered a generous

field of view for imagers on a modest

budget, and cameras built around the

KAF-8300 detector quickly became

the tool of choice for many deep sky

astrophotographers.

Today, another ON Semiconductor

CCD chip is set to make a splash in the

imaging market with a detector that’s

nearly twice the size of the 8300 CCD:

The KAF-16200, a 16-megapixel chip

roughly ¾ the size of a 35-mm camera

What We Like:

Generous field of view

Comfortable design

What We Don't Like:

Substantial size and weight

Gain and offset settings

frame. With our interest piqued, we

borrowed one of the first cameras to

feature this chip to see how it performs

in the field.

Fit and finish

The Chinese-made QHY16200A camera

with its 27 × 21.6-mm, 4,540 × 3,630-

pixel ‘APS-H’ array comes with an

attractive price for such a large 16-MP

chip. Its 6-micron pixels are slightly

larger than the 5.4-μm pixels in the

KAF-8300 CCD. The camera features

two-stage thermoelectric cooling and

a butterfly-shaped shutter that ensures

even illumination and allows dark

exposures without having to cover the

QHY16200A Monochrome

CCD camera and 7-Position

50-mm Filter Wheel

and Off-Axis Guider

U.S. Price: $4,399

qhyccd.com

WThe QHY16200A

camera, filter wheel

and QHYOAG-M

shown attached to

the author’s 102-mm

refractor. Balancing

the 2.5-kg camera

load on this scope

was relatively easy

by sliding everything

forward on the

scope’s dovetail

plate in the telescope

mounting.

AS&T TEST REPORT by Johnny Horne