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Starlight Xpress TRIUS PRO-25C User Manual
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Starlight Xpress TRIUS PRO-25C User Manual

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Handbook for the TRIUS PRO-25C
Issue 1 April 2019
The TRIUS PRO-25C Colour
CCD camera user manual
Thank you for purchasing a Starlight Xpress CCD camera. We hope that you will be very satisfied with
the results.
The TRIUS PRO-25C is an advanced, high-resolution one-shot colour, cooled CCD camera, especially
designed for astronomical imaging. It uses a version of the very popular Sony 'SuperHAD' CCDs that
offer very high QE and extremely low thermal noise. It is a substantial upgrade on the SXVR camera
range and incorporates several new features, such as 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 or UltraStar 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 -40 degrees C.
As per the TRIUS range, this camera also includes a CCD temperature monitoring circuit that provides
regulated set-point cooling of the chip, adjustable chip alignment and a very compact overall size.
The TRIUS PRO-25C uses a Sony ICX453AQ 'SuperHAD' progressive scan CCD, with 3024 x 2016 x
7.8uM pixels in a 23.4 x 15.6mm active area. This device has an excellent quantum efficiency, with a
broad spectral response peaking at around 60% in yellow light, and an extremely low dark current,
well below that of any comparable CCD currently available. While this device also has an excellent
blue light sensitivity, it has a strong infra-red response, which makes it ideal for all aspects of both
planetary and deep-sky imaging, especially with an H-alpha filter. The H-alpha QE is about 55%,
considerably better than other interline chips.
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Summary of Contents for Starlight Xpress TRIUS PRO-25C

  • Page 1 The TRIUS PRO-25C Colour CCD camera user manual Thank you for purchasing a Starlight Xpress CCD camera. We hope that you will be very satisfied with the results. The TRIUS PRO-25C is an advanced, high-resolution one-shot colour, cooled CCD camera, especially designed for astronomical imaging.
  • Page 2 8) A 'Y' power lead for connecting the cooling fan. 9) A USB Stick with the TRIUS PRO-25C control software and this manual. You will also need a PC computer with Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8 installed. This machine must have at least one USB 2.0 port available and at least 256 Mbytes of memory.
  • Page 3 Handbook for the TRIUS PRO-25C Issue 1 April 2019 cables. Five metres of good quality cable is the maximum normally possible without boosters or extra powered hubs, although you can sometimes get good results at longer distances with very high quality cables.
  • Page 4 ‘BlockIOClass’ and clicking on the ‘+’ sign will reveal it to be a ‘Starlight Xpress USB 2.0 SXV-SX25C BlockIO camera driver’. If this device shows as faulty, try clicking on it and selecting ‘properties’ and then ‘update driver’.
  • Page 5 Handbook for the TRIUS PRO-25C Issue 1 April 2019 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 6 Handbook for the TRIUS PRO-25C Issue 1 April 2019 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 7 Handbook for the TRIUS PRO-25C Issue 1 April 2019 complications, which are best avoided at this early stage. There are two simple options, one of which is available to everyone with a sheet of aluminium baking foil: 1) Attach a standard ‘M42’ SLR camera lens to the TRIUS-SX25C, using the 26mm spacer to achieve the correct focal distance.
  • Page 8 Handbook for the TRIUS PRO-25C Issue 1 April 2019 After the exposure and download have completed (about 4 seconds) an image of some kind will appear on the computer monitor. It will probably be poorly focused and incorrectly exposed, but any...
  • Page 9 Handbook for the TRIUS PRO-25C Issue 1 April 2019 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’ header tag where you will see the ‘Synthesize colour image’...
  • Page 10 Handbook for the TRIUS PRO-25C Issue 1 April 2019 I suggest that you switch on the Colour smoothing filter and the Anti-alias filter – you can experiment with the other options as you gain more experience. Now click on ‘Create image’ and you should see that the grid pattern disappears and is replaced by colour image data.
  • Page 11 Handbook for the TRIUS PRO-25C Issue 1 April 2019 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 12 ‘crispness’. At this point, you will have a working knowledge of how to take and process an TRIUS PRO-25C image. It is time to move on to astronomical imaging, which has its own, unique, set of problems!
  • Page 13 If you use a focal reducer, using it at maximum reduction may cause the relatively large chip of the TRIUS PRO-25C to suffer from considerable ‘vignetting’ (dimming towards the corners) and this will be difficult to remove from your images.
  • Page 14 Handbook for the TRIUS PRO-25C Issue 1 April 2019 you can now use the mouse pointer to click on the star image and the new focus frame co-ordinates will be displayed. Now return to the camera interface window and click on ‘Start’ in the Focus frame.
  • Page 15 ‘hot pixels’ and thermal gradients of your CCD, so that these defects are largely removed when the dark frame is subtracted from the light frame. However, the TRIUS PRO-25C CCD is quite different from those used in other brands of camera and generates an extremely low level of dark noise.
  • Page 16 Handbook for the TRIUS PRO-25C Issue 1 April 2019 ‘Bias frames’ are somewhat more useful than dark frames when using the TRIUS-SX25C. A bias frame is essentially a zero exposure dark frame and records any minor readout defects that the CCD may possess, so a ‘bias frame subtraction’...
  • Page 17 Handbook for the TRIUS PRO-25C Issue 1 April 2019 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’ (brightness and contrast) of the image to get the best visual appearance.
  • Page 18 Handbook for the TRIUS PRO-25C Issue 1 April 2019 The image now looks quite impressive and I hope that you like the result from this simple processing. Further small refinements are usually possible and you will become expert at judging the best way to achieve these as your experience increases.
  • Page 19 Handbook for the TRIUS PRO-25C Issue 1 April 2019 Taking pictures of the planets: Planetary imaging is in many ways quite different from deep sky imaging. Most deep sky objects are faint and relatively large, so a short focal length and a long exposure are needed, while planets are bright and very small, needing long focal lengths and short exposures.
  • Page 20 Handbook for the TRIUS PRO-25C Issue 1 April 2019 A raw image 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 21 4 times the effective sensitivity. Using 2x2 binning, you can considerably improve the sensitivity of the TRIUS PRO-25C without losing a great deal of resolving power, so you may like to use this mode for many faint deep-sky objects. Other binning modes (3x3 and 4x4) are available and will further increase the image brightness and reduce its resolution.
  • Page 22 The TRIUS PRO-25C guider port The TRIUS PRO-25C 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...
  • Page 23 PRO-25C is employed as an autoguider. ********************************************************************* Camera maintenance: Very little maintenance is needed to keep the TRIUS PRO-25C 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 24 ********************************************************************* Some details of the camera and CCD characteristics The TRIUS PRO-25C uses a Sony ICX453AQ ‘SuperHAD’ progressive scan CCD, with 3032 x 2016 x 7.4uM pixels in a 23.4 x 14.9 mm active area. CCD type: Sony ICX453AQ SuperHAD interline Bayer matrix imager.
  • Page 25 Handbook for the TRIUS PRO-25C Issue 1 April 2019 CCD size: Active area 23.4mm x 14.9mm CCD pixels: 3032 x 2016 pixel array. Each pixel is 7.4 x 7.4uM Well depth: Full res. mode 30,000e. Binned 2x2 mode approx. 40,000e Mean visual QE: 60%, 65% at peak (540nM) Useful spectral response: 360nM –...

  • Page 26: Conditions Of Guarantee

    Issue 1 April 2019 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.