Note the pricing has NOT been finalized by QHYCCD at this time. Final pricing is still subject to change.

The 268C was announced at NEAIC/NEAF 2019. It is not currently available for order, but expected first deliveries will be in Summer/Fall 2019. We will update this page as soon as QHY begins accepting orders.

Description

The QHY411 is the largest resolution cooled CMOS camera in the world. The 150 Megapixel SONY IMX411BSI back-illuminated sensor has a 14192 x 10640 pixel array with 3.76µm pixels. The sensor size is 54mm x 40mm. The QHY411 has both monochrome and one shot color versions.

Most CMOS sensors are 12-bit or 14-bit. This means that weak signals are not very highly sampled. Photometric measurements of low signals in such cases are not as accurate. Some cameras combine two 12-bit outputs to create 16-bit images, but the actual number of levels is still 4096 x 2 = 8192 levels. Still less than native 16-bit. The QHY411 is the world's first scientific CMOS camera with native 16-bit A/D on-chip. The output is real 16-bit with 65536 levels.

One benefit of the back-illuminated CMOS structure is improved full well capacity. This is particularly helpful for sensors with small pixels. Even with unbinned 3.76µm pixels the QHY411 has a full well capacity of 44ke-. When binned 2x2 to 7.5µm the full well is 176ke- and when binned 3x3 to 11µm the full well is 396ke-.

The QHY411 has only one electron of read noise at high gain and 1FPS(16bit), 2FPS(8bit) high readout speed. One electron of read noise means the camera can achieve a SNR>3 at only 3 to 4 photons. This is perfect performance when conditions are photon limited, i.e., short exposures, narrow band imaging, etc., making this large area sensor ideal for sky surveys and time domain astronomy.

The QHY411 is a back-illuminated Scientific CMOS camera with extremely low dark current using SONY's Exmor BSI CMOS technology. In general, a fan-blade mechanical shutter will be broken if it is used 200,000 times or so, and in some specific cases it is easy to fail to switch on or off. The advantage of an electronic shutter over mechanical shutter is high reliability and stability when the observatory shoots a large number of pictures. The electronic shutter is a relatively perfect choice for the observatory.

Specification