Download
Share
Print this page
Starlight Xpress TRIUS PRO-825C Manual
  1. Manuals
  2. Brands
  3. Starlight Xpress Manuals
  4. Security Camera
  5. TRIUS PRO-825C
  6. Manual

Starlight Xpress TRIUS PRO-825C Manual

Hide thumbs

Advertisement

Quick Links

Download this manual
Issue 1 September 2020
Handbook for the TRIUS PRO-825C
Manual for the TRIUS PRO-825C colour CCD
Camera
Thank you for purchasing a Starlight Xpress 'TRIUS PRO 825C' Colour 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-825C 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 II' 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

Advertisement

loading
Need help?

Need help?

Do you have a question about the TRIUS PRO-825C and is the answer not in the manual?

Questions and answers

Subscribe to Our Youtube Channel

Related Manuals for Starlight Xpress TRIUS PRO-825C

Summary of Contents for Starlight Xpress TRIUS PRO-825C

  • Page 1 Manual for the TRIUS PRO-825C colour CCD Camera Thank you for purchasing a Starlight Xpress ‘TRIUS PRO 825C’ Colour 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 Issue 1 September 2020 Handbook for the TRIUS PRO-825C The TRIUS PRO-825C uses a Sony ICX825AK ‘EXview II’ progressive scan CCD, with 1392 x 1040 x 6.45uM pixels in a 8.8 x 6.3mm active area. This EXview II device has...
  • Page 3 Handbook for the TRIUS PRO-825C ‘Quick Starting’ your TRIUS PRO-825C system Please note, the TRIUS PRO-825C is the successor to the TRIUS SX-9C. The drivers and file formats are identical so within our software and other third party software, your PRO-825C camera will be identified as an H9C or SX-9C derivative.
  • Page 4 Issue 1 September 2020 Handbook for the TRIUS PRO-825C Installing the USB system: First, find a free USB socket on your PC and plug in the USB cable (do not connect the camera at this time). If you do not have a USB2 capable computer, it is normally possible to install a USB 2 card into an expansion slot.
  • Page 5 ‘BlockIOClass’ and clicking on the ‘+’ sign will reveal it to be a ‘Starlight Xpress USB 2.0 SXV-H9C BlockIO camera driver’. If this device shows as faulty, try clicking on it and selecting ‘properties’...
  • Page 6 Issue 1 September 2020 Handbook for the TRIUS PRO-825C Now connect up the power supply and switch it on. The supply is a very efficient ‘switch mode’ unit, which can operate from either 110v or 220v AC via an appropriate mains power cable (supplied). You can now start the software by double clicking on the icon, when you should see the main menu and image panel appear.
  • Page 7 Issue 1 September 2020 Handbook for the TRIUS PRO-825C 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 chip temperature) and, needless to say, this is rather extreme.
  • Page 8 There are two simple options, one of which is available to everyone with a sheet of aluminium baking foil: Attach a standard ‘M42’ SLR camera lens to the TRIUS PRO-825C, using the 26mm spacer to achieve the correct focal distance.
  • Page 9 Our guarantee ensures that any electrical faults are corrected quickly and at no cost to the customer. As the TRIUS PRO-825C is a ‘Single-shot’ colour camera, the full resolution raw image will show a fine grid pattern, due to the RGB colour filters on the CCD chip surface.
  • Page 10 Issue 1 September 2020 Handbook for the TRIUS PRO-825C image corrections can be performed on the raw data (e.g. dark frame subtraction), as these are impractical after conversion to colour. Also note that binning the raw image at anything other than 1x1, will destroy any colour information and so output only monochrome images.
  • Page 11 Issue 1 September 2020 Handbook for the TRIUS PRO-825C 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 Issue 1 September 2020 Handbook for the TRIUS PRO-825C 7) Remove Background: - This option will adjust the sky background brightness to give an optimum background level. 8) High Pass filters: - Automatically sharpen the luminance data to emphasise fine details. Most useful for sharpening planetary images but will also increase the noise content.
  • Page 13 Issue 1 September 2020 Handbook for the TRIUS PRO-825C The colour balance controls seem complex, but are really quite easy to use. The most useful controls are the ‘Start’ and ‘Saturation Factor’ settings. Saturation factor will simply vary the colour intensity, without any alteration of the colour balance, but the ‘Start’...
  • Page 14 ‘crispness’. At this point, you will have a working knowledge of how to take and process an TRIUS PRO-825C image. It is time to move on to astronomical imaging, which has its own, unique, set of problems! *********************************************************************...
  • Page 15 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-825C 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 16 F = Pixel size * 205920 / Resolution (in arc seconds) In the case of the TRIUS PRO-825C and a 2 arc seconds per pixel resolution, we get F = 0.00454 * 205920 / 2 = 467mm For a 200mm SCT, this is an F ratio of 467 / 200 = F2.34, which is much less than can...
  • Page 17 Issue 1 September 2020 Handbook for the TRIUS PRO-825C 128 x 128 pixel segment of the image at relatively high speed. This focus window may be positioned anywhere in the camera field and can be displayed with an adjustable degree of automatic contrast stretching (for focusing on faint stars). To use this mode, start up the software and select the SXV camera interface (File menu).
  • Page 18 Issue 1 September 2020 Handbook for the TRIUS PRO-825C Taking your first astronomical image: I will assume that you are now set up with a focused camera attached to a telescope with an operating sidereal drive. If so, you are now in a position to take a moderately long exposure of some interesting deep-sky astronomical object (I will deal with planets later).
  • Page 19 CCD, so that these defects are largely removed when the dark frame is subtracted from the light frame. The TRIUS PRO-825C CCD is quite different from those used in other brands of camera and generates an extremely low level of dark noise.
  • Page 20 Issue 1 September 2020 Handbook for the TRIUS PRO-825C Processing a deep-sky image: Make sure the ‘Auto Contrast Stretch’ is switched off and load your image into SXV_hmf_usb. If you intend to subtract a dark frame, select ‘Merge’ and then ‘Subtract Dark Frame’.
  • Page 21 Issue 1 September 2020 Handbook for the TRIUS PRO-825C 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’ (brightness and contrast) of the image to get the best visual appearance. First, use the ‘Normal’...
  • Page 22 Issue 1 September 2020 Handbook for the TRIUS PRO-825C 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. Once the reference is selected, you can either add directly, or average the images together.
  • Page 23 Issue 1 September 2020 Handbook for the TRIUS PRO-825C check the ‘Autosave Image’ checkbox near the bottom of the window. If you now click on ‘Take Picture’ the automatic sequence will begin and will not stop until you press a computer key. The images will be saved in FITs format with sequential names such as ‘Img23, Img24….’...
  • Page 24 Issue 1 September 2020 Handbook for the TRIUS PRO-825C Try applying an ‘Unsharp Mask’ filter with a radius of 5 and a power of 5. This will greatly increase the visibility of any detail on the planet, but the optimum radius and power will have to be determined by experiment.
  • Page 25 Other features of the TRIUS PRO-825C hardware and software ‘Slew & Sum’ imaging: The TRIUS PRO-825C 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 Issue 1 September 2020 Handbook for the TRIUS PRO-825C such a way that the errors are removed. Common flat field errors are due to dust motes on the camera window and vignetting effects in the optical system of the telescope. Dust motes act as ‘inverse pinholes’...
  • Page 27 ********************************************************************* The TRIUS PRO-825C guider port The TRIUS PRO-825C 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-825C Camera maintenance: Very little maintenance is needed to keep the TRIUS PRO-825C in excellent operating order, however two problems, which are common to all CCD equipment, might show up on occasion. These are dust and condensation.
  • Page 29 Replace all the camera parts in reverse order and the job is done. Dealing with condensation: The TRIUS PRO-825C is designed to avoid condensation by minimising the volume of gas trapped within the CCD cavity and by preventing moisture ingress. This normally...
  • Page 30 ********************************************************************* Some details of the camera and CCD characteristics The TRIUS PRO-825C uses a Sony ICX825AK ‘EXview II’ progressive scan CCD, with 1392 x 1040 x 6.45uM pixels in a 8.8 x 6.3 mm active area. This EXview II device CCD type: Sony ICX825AK EXview II interline imager.

  • Page 31: Conditions Of Guarantee

    Handbook for the TRIUS PRO-825C 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.

This manual is also suitable for:

100-0052