Quick Review of QHY5 Autoguiding Camera
Finally I have more time. The exams are almost finished so I have three months of holidays now and I hope that I will take some good astrophotos in this time and post it here. I will also continue with Astrophotography Tutorial but for today I have prepared something more fresh. The last week I have ordered new autoguiding camera for my setup. The previous one, Atik ATK-2HS, was not mine actually so I decided to buy the new one. I have ordered QHY5 from UK, the astronomy store named Modern Astronomy. The shipment to Slovenia costed only 10 pounds and it took only 4 days to arrive.
The first impression was very positive! Even though it is “made in China” it looks very well designed and made. The build quality is on very high level. It is not plastic like Atik, but metallic. The original package comes with camera, T-2 to 1,25″ nosepiece adapter, USB cable and setup instructions. I have also ordered RJ-11 cable for direct autoguiding via camera.
I got impressed when I unscrewed the nosepiece because of the size of the CCD. It seems really huge comparing to tiny CCD detectors in webcams (Atik ATK-2HS also uses ordinary 640×480 one). The resolution is 1280 x 1024, more specification are available at the QHY website.
QHY5 without nosepiece
The best thing is that QHY5 has T-2 thread which perfectly fits to my autoguiding telescope so I can just screw it on.
QHY5 on the autoguiding telescope
As you can notice it has two ports in the back side. One is USB 2.0 port for connection with the computer and another is ST-4 compatible autoguiding port for direct connection with the mount. I am using Vixen SkySensor hand-controller and I though that it is compatible but in fact it isn’t, because Vixen uses it’s own standard for autoguding. The connector is the same but wires are connected differently so today I am going to make a new cable. The camera has also build-in red LED diode which is too bright and could be disturbing in a completely dark so I pasted a black stripe over it.
Back side of QHY5
The camera comes with one A4 paper sheet of instructions how to setup. The drivers are not included, you have to download it from the Modern Astronomy site. The setup is really simple, you just install the generic driver and plug in the camera. Then you have to install additional driver for the autoguiding software you are using, in my case Guidemaster. All the main autoguiding software are supported, including ASCOM platform.
To sum up, I am very satisfied with the purchase. Two days ago I had a first light and everything worked fine. I was planning to capture M102 but ended with just 2 pictures because it clouded. This is 100% crop of one of them as a proof that camera guides OK:
100% crop of M102
I hope you enjoyed the review. If you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask under the comments 
Related posts:
Recent Comments