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Starlight Xpress TRIUS PRO-814C Manual
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Starlight Xpress TRIUS PRO-814C Manual

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Handbook for the Trius PRO-814C
Issue 1 September 2020
Manual for the TRIUS PRO-814C colour CCD
camera
Thank you for purchasing a Starlight Xpress 'TRIUS PRO 814C' camera. We hope that
you will be very pleased with the performance of this product. Please register your
product and warranty at
https://forms.gle/tmsHEJfQG2bLJjr57
.
The TRIUS PRO-814C is an advanced, high-resolution one-shot colour, cooled CCD
camera, especially designed for astronomical imaging. It uses a third generation
version of the very popular Sony 'EXview' CCDs that offer very high QE and extremely
low thermal noise. This 'PRO' camera uses an updated version of the original TRIUS
main board and has both improved read noise and faster download time. It features
an internal USB hub with 3 external ports and a dry argon CCD chamber fill. The USB
hub permits several other devices to share the single USB connection and greatly
reduces the number of cables required in a typical set-up. For example, a Lodestar PRO
or Ultrastar PRO guide camera and an SX filter wheel could use two of the USB ports
and the third might connect to an electric focuser, or similar peripheral. The argon fill,
along with other improvements to the cooler stack, has improved the delta T to about
-42 degrees C below ambient. The camera also includes a CCD temperature
monitoring circuit that provides regulated set-point cooling of the chip, an adjustable
chip alignment plate and a very compact overall size.
1

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Summary of Contents for Starlight Xpress TRIUS PRO-814C

  • Page 1 Manual for the TRIUS PRO-814C colour CCD camera Thank you for purchasing a Starlight Xpress ‘TRIUS PRO 814C’ camera. We hope that you will be very pleased with the performance of this product. Please register your product and warranty at https://forms.gle/tmsHEJfQG2bLJjr57...
  • Page 2 Handbook for the Trius PRO-814C Issue 1 September 2020 The TRIUS PRO-814C uses a Sony ICX815AQG ‘EXview’ progressive scan CCD, with 3388 x 2712 x 3.69uM pixels in a 12.48 x 9.98mm active area. This EXview device has an excellent quantum efficiency, with a broad spectral response peaking at around 77% in yellow light, and an extremely low dark current, well below that of any comparable CCD currently available.
  • Page 3 7) Two USB 2.0 Mini to Male B USB Cable 0.5m 8) A 'Y' power lead for connecting the cooling fan. 9) A USB Stick with the TRIUS PRO-814C control software and this manual. You will also need a PC computer with Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8 installed.
  • Page 4 Handbook for the Trius PRO-814C Issue 1 September 2020 initiate the self-install software which will guide you through the process of installing the SX camera software onto your computer. Now connect the USB cable to the socket on the camera rear panel.
  • Page 5 ‘BlockIOClass’ and clicking on the ‘+’ sign will reveal it to be a ‘Starlight Xpress USB 2.0 SXV-H814C BlockIO camera driver’. If this device shows as faulty, try clicking on it and selecting ‘properties’...
  • Page 6 Handbook for the Trius PRO-814C Issue 1 September 2020 Now click on the camera icon at the top of the screen. If the USB connection is OK, a message box will inform you of the ‘Handle’ number for the SXVIO interface and various other version details etc.
  • Page 7 Handbook for the Trius PRO-814C Issue 1 September 2020 As can be seen above, there is a CCD temperature monitoring window at the right hand side of the panel. At switch-on, this will default to full power cooling with an end point of -40C (actual temperature) and, needless to say, this is rather extreme.
  • Page 8 Handbook for the Trius PRO-814C Issue 1 September 2020 Recording your first image: We now have the camera and computer set up to take pictures, but an optical system is needed to project an image onto the CCD surface. You could use your telescope, but this introduces additional complications, which are best avoided at this early stage.
  • Page 9 Handbook for the Trius PRO-814C Issue 1 September 2020 If you use a normal lens, then stop it down to the smallest aperture number possible, (usually F22), as this will minimise focus problems and keep the light level reasonable for daytime testing. The pin hole needs no such adjustments and will...
  • Page 10 Handbook for the Trius PRO-814C Issue 1 September 2020 2) If the screen is completely white, the camera may be greatly overexposed. Try a shorter exposure time, or stop down your lens. See if covering the lens causes the image to darken.
  • Page 11 Handbook for the Trius PRO-814C Issue 1 September 2020 The visible grid encodes the colour information within the image data and will now be used to decode the red, green and blue image planes into a colour picture. To do this, open the ‘Colour’...
  • Page 12 Handbook for the Trius PRO-814C Issue 1 September 2020 5) IR Filter Used? – Sets the colour balance to allow for the loss of infra-red content when using an IR blocking filter. 6) Stretching: - A selection of contrast-boosting options which are preset for various subjects.
  • Page 13 Handbook for the Trius PRO-814C Issue 1 September 2020 There is every reason to expect that the image will be reasonably well colour balanced, but if it is not, you can adjust the colour in the ‘Set Colour Balance’ dialog box (Under ‘Colour’...
  • Page 14 It is fairly easy to find the correct focus setting for the camera when using a standard SLR lens, but quite a different matter when the TRIUS PRO-814C is attached to a telescope! The problem is that most telescopes have a large range of focus adjustment and the CCD needs to be quite close to the correct position before you can discern details well enough to optimise the focus setting.
  • Page 15 Handbook for the Trius PRO-814C Issue 1 September 2020 telescope in order that the image scale is suitable for the subject being imaged and (sometimes) to include a ‘flip mirror’ finder unit for visual object location. A simple, but invaluable device, is the ‘par-focal eyepiece’. This is an eyepiece in which the field stop is located at the same distance from the barrel end, as the CCD is from the camera barrel end.
  • Page 16 Handbook for the Trius PRO-814C Issue 1 September 2020 seconds per pixel for deep sky images. This matches the telescope resolution to the CCD resolution and avoids ‘undersampling’ the image, which can result in square stars and other unwanted effects. To calculate the focal length required for this...
  • Page 17 Handbook for the Trius PRO-814C Issue 1 September 2020 Press ‘Take Picture’ and wait for the image to download. There is a good chance that your selected star will appear somewhere within the image frame and it should be close to a sharp focus. If the focus is still poor, then it may appear as a pale disk of light, often with a dark centre (the secondary mirror shadow in an SCT, or Newtonian).
  • Page 18 CCD, so that these defects are largely removed when the dark frame is subtracted from the light frame. However, the TRIUS PRO-814C CCD is quite different from those used in other brands of camera and generates an extremely low level of dark noise.
  • Page 19 Handbook for the Trius PRO-814C Issue 1 September 2020 this, but other software (e.g. Maxim DL) will provide a ‘hot pixel killer’ that can be mapped to specific locations in the image, or methods such as ‘Sigma combine’ may be used.
  • Page 20 Handbook for the Trius PRO-814C Issue 1 September 2020 M42 – 30 seconds exposure at F2 with a C8 Hyperstar 2) Once you have subtracted any dark frame, you can convert the raw image to colour. 3) The resulting image will probably look faint and dull, possibly with a pale yellowish background, due to light pollution so it is now time to process the ‘luminance’...
  • Page 21 Handbook for the Trius PRO-814C Issue 1 September 2020 attractive, although dark. You can now try brightening the highlights with another ‘Normal’ stretch, in which you bring down the ‘White’ slider to just above the main image peak. The best setting for this is rather more difficult to guess and you may need several attempts before the result is ideal.
  • Page 22 Handbook for the Trius PRO-814C Issue 1 September 2020 Other things to try, include summing several images for a better signal to noise ratio. Summing can be done in the ‘Merge’ menu and involves loading the first processed image, selecting a reference point (a star) then loading the second image and finding the same star with the mouse.
  • Page 23 Handbook for the Trius PRO-814C Issue 1 September 2020 To start the Autosave process, call up the SXV Camera Interface and select the ‘Continuous Mode’ check box at the top (make sure the rest are unchecked). Now check the ‘Autosave Image’ checkbox near the bottom of the window. If you now click on ‘Take Picture’...
  • Page 24 Handbook for the Trius PRO-814C Issue 1 September 2020 After conversion and the application of an ‘Unsharp mask’ In general terms, the larger the image and the worse the seeing, then the wider the radius for best results. My Jupiter shots are usually about one third the height of the CCD frame and I find that the ‘radius 5, power 5’...
  • Page 25 Other features of the TRIUS PRO-814C hardware and software ‘Slew & Sum’ imaging: The TRIUS PRO-814C can be used in an automatic image-stacking mode, called ‘Slew & Sum’. The camera is set to take several sequential exposures, which are automatically ‘slewed’ into alignment and then summed together by the software.
  • Page 26 Handbook for the Trius PRO-814C Issue 1 September 2020 many faint deep-sky objects. Other binning modes (3x3 and 4x4) are available and will further increase the image brightness and reduce its resolution. However, generally, these are more useful for finding faint objects, than for imaging.
  • Page 27 ********************************************************************* The TRIUS-H814C guider port The TRIUS PRO-814C is provided with a guide port for use with ST4 compatible mounts. The Autoguider output port is a 6 way RJ11 socket, which is compatible with the standard autoguider input of most telescope mounts. It provides 4 active-low opto-isolator outputs and a common return line, capable of sinking a minimum of 5mA per output.
  • Page 28 Handbook for the Trius PRO-814C Issue 1 September 2020 collect on the window they may not be noticed at all on deep sky (small F ratio) images, as they will be very much out of focus. However, if a powerful contrast boost of the image is carried out, they may well begin to show as the shadow ‘Do-nuts’...
  • Page 29 Issue 1 September 2020 Dealing with condensation: The TRIUS PRO-814C is designed to avoid condensation by minimising the volume of gas trapped within the CCD cavity and by preventing moisture ingress. This normally works very well, but storage of the camera in a humid location can lead to the trapped argon becoming moist by diffusion through the optical window mounting thread etc.
  • Page 30 Handbook for the Trius PRO-814C Issue 1 September 2020 CCD type: Sony ICX815AQG EXview interline imager. CCD size: Active area 12.48mm x 9.98mm CCD pixels: 3388 x 2712 pixel array. Each pixel is 3.69 x 3.69uM square Bayer Matrix: RGGB primary colour Well depth: Full res.

  • Page 31: Conditions Of Guarantee

    Issue 1 September 2020 Dear Observer, Thank you for purchasing a Starlight Xpress CCD Imaging System. We are confident that you will gain much satisfaction from this equipment, but please read carefully the accompanying instruction manual to ensure that you achieve the best performance that is capable of providing.