Special combination package available now! When you purchase a QHY600 camera, you will receive a discount coupon to receive 30% off on a QHY367 color camera. Incredible savings to cover all of your imaging needs.

Contact Cloud Break Optics after purchase of the 600 to receive your discount coupon.

Description 

The QHY600 uses the new Sony Full Frame Sensor. It has both monochrome and color (coming soon) versions. This is a full frame format back-illuminated CMOS type image sensor with a square pixel array and 60M effective pixels. It features 3.76um pixel size, a 16bit ADC, a sensor size is 36mm x 24mm, and ultra low dark-noise.

The QHY600 is a cooled CMOS camera with native 16-bit A/D on-chip. The output is real 16-bits with 65536 levels compared with the 12bit and 14bit ADC common to other CMOS cameras. The 16bit ADC can get high sample resolution, system gain will be less than 1e/ADU. No sample error noise and low noise.

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 3.76um pixels, the QHY600 has a full well capacity of 49ke-. When binned 2x2 to 7.5um the full well is 196ke- and when binned 3x3 to 11um the full well is 441ke-.

The QHY600 has only one electron of read noise at high gain and 2FPS 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 QHY600 is a back-illuminated Scientific CMOS camera with extremely low dark current using SONY's Exmor BSI CMOS technology.In general, the 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 electronic shutter over mechanical shutter is high reliability and stability when the observatory shoots a large number of pictures. The electronic shutter is a perfect choice for observatories.

The QHY600 will be offered in both Photographic and Professional versions.  The differences between these two versions is as follows:

1.  The Photographic version has USB3.0 interface, the Professional version has USB3.0 and 2x10Gigabit Fiber.

2.  The Professional version may have more on-camera DDR3 memory than photograph version.

3.  The professional version has rich, external, expandable I/O signals as well as a rich resource that allow the user to customize the FPGA inside the camera.

4.  The Professional version has a longer body to accommodate the length of the optical fiber interface.

5.  The Professional version will cost more than the Photographic version.

Checkout this article that covers QHY testing of the absolute QE of the 600 sensor, as well as comparison to the KAI-11002.

You can check out a great article covering all of the ways QHY is different from other models here.

Specifications

QHY600 FULL FRAME FORMAT SCIENTIFIC CMOS CAMERA SPECIFICATIONS
Model	QHY600 PRO (Professional Version, previous name QHY600U3G20) QHY600 PH (Photographic Version, previous name QHY600U3) QHY600L （Lite Version）
Image Sensor	SONY Full Frame BSI CMOS Sensor IMX455 All Mono version of QHY600PH & QHY600Pro use IMX455 industry grade sensor (Grade-K).   All Color version of QHY600 is using the consumer grade sensor (Grade-C) QHY600L lite version using the Grade-C sensor.
Pixel Size	3.76um x 3.76um
Color / Mono Version	Both Available.QHY600C/M-PH and QHY600C/M-Pro
Sensor Surface Glass	AR+AR Multi-Coated
Sensor Type	Back-Illuminated (BSI)
Effective Pixels	61.17 Megapixels    (9576*6388 effective area. 9600*6422 with overscan and optically black area)
Effective Image Area	36mm x 24mm
Full Well Capacity (1x1, 2x2, 3x3)	Standard Mode >51ke-  / >204ke- / >408ke- Super Full Well Mode >80ke-  / >320ke- / >720ke-
A/D	16-bit (0-65535 levels) at 1X1 binning   18-bit at 2X2, 19-bit at 3X3, 20-bit at 4X4 software binning *QHY600 uses the software digital binning for 2*2binning. With digital sum, 2*2binning will be four 16-bit summed then it is 18-bit.
Sensor Size	Full Frame Format
Frame Rate	USB3.0 Port Image Transfer Speed Full Frame Size: 4.0FPS (8-bit output) Full Frame Size: 2.5FPS (16-bit output) 7.2FPS at 9600x3194, 22.5FPS at 9600x1080, 28FPS at 9600x768, 47FPS at 9600x480, 160FPS at 9600x100, Fiber Port Image Transfer Speed (QHY600Pro only) Full Frame Size: 4.0FPS (16-bit output)
Read Noise	1.0e- to 3.7e-  (Standard Mode)
Dark Current	0.0022e-/p/s @ -20C    0.0046e-/p/s @ -10C
Zero Amplifer Glow	Yes
Exposure Time Range	40us - 3600sec
Firmware/FPGA remote Upgrade	Supported. Via Camera USB Port
Shutter Type	Electric Rolling Shutter
Computer Interface	USB3.0 / 2*10 Gigabit Fiber Port (2*10Gigabit Fiber Port is a feature of the professional version only and needs the QHYCCD PCIE Graber card.  In the early bird version the hardware is disabled.  It can be enabled in an upgrade to the professional version in the future)
Hardware Frame Sequence Number	Supported
GPIO	(Pro Version Only)  4PIN, high speed with flexible FPGA conntrol.  Can be used as trigger in/out, multiple camera sync capture control, high precision GPS time measurement etc.
Built-in Image Buffer	DDR3 memory PH&Pro Ver: 2GBytes（16Gbit） Lite Ver: 1GBytes（8Gbit）
Cooling System	Dual Stage TEC cooler: - Long exposures (> 1 second) typically -35C below ambient - Short exposure (< 1second) high FPS, typically -30C below ambient -The QHY600 water-cooled customized version has a maximum temperature difference of -45 degrees in continuous mode and single frame mode with an exposure time greater than 1 second.
Anti-Dew Heater	Yes
Telescope Interface	M54/0.75
Optic Window Type	AR+AR High Quality Multi-Layer Anti-Reflection Coating
Power	40W/100%  20W/50%  13.8W/0%
Back Focal Length	17.5mm (±0.2)
Weight (net)	Pro Version : 965g * PH Version: 850g* Lite Version: 790g* * M54/0.75mm center/tilt adjust adapter not included)

 

*  The Early Bird price is USD5000 for Monochrome version.  The QHY600 Early Bird Price is effective from Aug,20, 2019 and will end in approximately about 2-3 months when the Photographic model is released, or when the Early Bird inventory is exhausted, whichever occurs first.

Multiple Readout Modes is a new function for newer QHY Cameras.  Different readout modes have different driver timing, etc., and result in different performance.  Each readout mode has its advantage and disadvantages.  The QHY600 currently has three readout modes.  In the future QHYCCD may add more modes. These readout modes are currently supported in the QHY ASCOM Camera Driver, SharpCAP software and the N.I.N.A software. You can find the readout list box in the software.

QHY600 Performance Curves in Readout Mode #0 (Photographic Mode).  In this mode there is a drop in the noise between Gain 25 and Gain 26.  We recommend setting the Gain to 26 to begin.  At this setting the full well is 27ke- and readout noise is 2.7e-.  For every long exposures you can lower the gain from this point to increase the full well capacity. 

 

QHY600 Performance Curves in Readout Mode #1 (High Gain Mode).  Please note there is a HGC/LGC switch point at gain55 to gain56. Gain0-55 uses LGC and Gain55-100 uses HGC.

 

 

QHY600 linear test results show good linearity up to 73000e-.  This is in readout modes # 0 and # 2. Gain = 0. In the linear fit graph we deleted the data above 73000e- and got R ^ 2 = 0.9998.\

At very short exposure times below 20ms the value is quite small and may be flicker induced by the tablet.
QHY600 Linearity Test

 

The QHY600 QE data below provided by Sony is relative QE, not absolute, however QHYCCD tested the absolute for QHY600 by comparing its response to a known reference.

This article can be found in https://www.qhyccd.com/index.php?m=content&c=index&a=show&catid=23&id=261

 

The Mechanical Size and Back focal Length (in optic) of  QHY600  Early Bird Price Version and Professional Version 

QHY600U3         (Amateur Photographic Version)