Player One Apollo-C (IMX174) USB3.0 Colour Camera

Focus on Solar imaging!

Apollo series is the world’s first camera line designed specifically for solar photography, named after Apollo.

The Apollo series features Sony sensors with global shutters and a focus on monochrome sensors.

Now, we launch 4 models of Apollo cameras:

Apollo-M MAX (IMX432), 1.1-inch sensor, monochrome.

Apollo-M MINI (IMX429), 2/3 inch sensor, monochrome.

Apollo-M (IMX174), 1/1.2 inch sensor, monochrome.

Apollo-C (IMX174) , 1/1.2 inch sensor, color.

* Notice: Solar cameras require energy rejection and light reducer, such as Baader film or Herschel wedge. Please DO NOT use it directly to image the Sun.  

Product Description

Apollo-C is a solar camera developed by Player One Astronomy, which adopts the Sony IMX174 1/1.2” format color sensor. The 5.86um pixel size accommodates a good depth of 32Ke with a total of 2.3MP  (the resolution is 1944*1216), and the diagonal is 13.3mm.

Pregius Technology

Apollo-C (IMX174) and Apollo-M (IMX174)  based on the Pregius 1st Gen, it was a giant leap in CMOS sensor development.

Format

Apollo-C (IMX174) has a 1/1.2″ format, this size is between Apollo-M MAX (IMX432) and Apollo-M MINI (IMX429).

Highlights

Recommended accessories:

ACS (Active Cooling System)

ACS is an external air-cooled system, designed for solar and big format planetary cameras that already has PCS (Passive Cooling System). ACS can provide much better temperature control. When the camera has PCS + ACS, the temperature is only 7℃ higher than ambient, the camera body is a little warm but won’t be hot! ACS can be used in daylight for solar imaging, and at night for DSO lucky imaging.

Features:

The naming of Player One Astronomy cameras is unique. Solar camera line, named after Apollo, the god of the sun. The suffix of the name describes the camera’s biggest feature.

Drivers and software download: http://player-one-astronomy.com/service/software/

Manuals download: http://player-one-astronomy.com/service/manuals/

Cutting-edge Design

The planetary cameras developed by Player One Astronomy use a scientific and technological regular hexagon to construct the main body line, supplemented by round chamfers to achieve both rigidity and flexibility. The positive orange, which implies solar, is matched with the low-key and steady black, and the super-fine frosting process on the entire surface makes the camera look luxurious and cool, highlighting the style of high-end players, can’t take my eyes off 

2nd Gen – Sensor Tilt Plate

When taking a solar photograph with a prominence telescope, the Newton ring is annoying. A smoother solar image without a Newton ring could be taken by adjusting the focal plate. Get a much smaller field curvature of the telescope.

The built-in high-density sponge shading pad can block the light from the side slits without any side leakage.

Passive Cooling System

Solar cameras work in daylight, the temperature could be much higher than at night. The heat of global shutter sensors will be a problem, especially in some big formats like IMX432. Player One adds a new feature called Passive Cooling System to conduct the heat from the sensor out.

256M DDR3 Cache

Player One Astronomy cameras are the first one that adopts the DDR3 cache in all planetary cameras in the world! It helps stabilize and secure data transmission, it effectively avoids frame dropping and greatly reduces read noise.

With the DDR3 cache, the camera does not have high demands on computing needs any longer, it will still have excellent performance even if it is connected to a USB 2.0 port.

DPS technology

The planetary cameras from Player One Astronomy have DPS (Dead Pixel Suppression) technology. The DPS analyzes many dark frames to find out those fixed abnormal pixels and records the map in camera memory. In imaging, in each exposure frame, the position of dead pixels will be given a median value according to the active pixels around that abnormal pixel.

Overvoltage and overcurrent protection mechanism

Player One cameras produced by the number one player ensure the safety of your camera and other equipment through overvoltage and overcurrent protection mechanisms.

Data Port

When the camera is connected to the USB 3.0 interface and a full-resolution preview is used, it can reach 164 FPS in RAW8 mode (10bit ADC). When recording images, since the actual writing speed will be affected by the writing speed of the hard disk itself, when the hard disk writing speed is slow, the recording may not reach the theoretical speed. It is recommended that you use a high-quality solid-state drive to record data to give full play to the performance of the camera.

Use the ST4 guide cable to connect the camera and the AUTO GUIDE port of the equatorial mount to do the guiding.

Performance

Readout Noise

Regarding readout noise, we solemnly promise that all values are obtained from actual tests.  And for users, you could use Sharpcap 4 for testing. SC4 has a function called Sensor Analysis, which provides a very simple way to test readout noise.

Player One wrote a tutorial on their website: https://player-one-astronomy.com/service/manuals/

If you are interested in readout noise testing, you may try it yourself, which is very simple.

QE Curve

Mechanical Drawing

Specifications