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.

Specifications