Captured from the backyard of my new home in Colorado, this is my first light image using the new QHY367C, Full Frame 7376x4938, 36.4mega pixel One Shot Color CMOS camera.

M78, otherwise known as NGC 2068 is a Diffuse and Reflection Nebula in the Constellation Orion and a part of the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex and lies at a distance of around 1600 Light Years from Earth, to the left of the image can be seen a small part of the huge Barnard's Loop which is much closer to us at a distance of approximately 500 Light Years. Seen at a shorter focal length Barnard's Loop resembles an arc and encompasses the other well-known objects M42 and The Horsehead Nebula.

I was pleasantly surprised at how well the camera is performing so far and how incredibly sensitive this camera is and with relatively low noise, this image comprises of 45 x 2 minute exposures with 60 x 2 minute dark frames and Flat Frames.

For Gain and Offset I used the "DSO" setting of gain 1208 and Offset 76, although it has been recommended that I try a Gain of 2280 for even higher sensitivity.

The QHY367C has an ambient of -35C and from the time the TEC cooling is turned on my sample camera cooled to -20C within 40 seconds from 32F. Image download speed using Maxim DL is about 2 seconds.

As my test camera doesn’t have an IR block filter at the optic window I mounted and used the luminance filter on my QHYCFW2-L 2” filter wheel, which I intend to use for the H-Alpha Filter. This same filter wheel I have been using with the QHY11 Full frame Mono CCD which is identical in size and proportions to the QHY367C.

Due to the large file size of 70MB I found Pre Processing using Pixinsight to be very slow (2.5 - 3 hours) and this is with an 8 Core Processor with 16MB DDR3 Ram, I decided to try Deep Sky Stacker as this free software works very well for DSLR and OSC cameras in my opinion. I was surprised that Pre-Processing took only 35 minutes.

Technical Information

Location: Whitewater Colorado

Captured February 15th 2016

Size: 7376 x 4938 pixels

Pixel Size: 4.88um x 4.88um

Total integration Time 90 minutes

QHY367C Full Frame One Shot Color COLDMOS cooled to -20C

45 x 120 sec @ 1x1

Optics: Takahashi E-180 Epsilon

Paramount GT-1100S German Equatorial Mount

Image Acquisition Maxim DL

Pre Processing Deep Sky Stacker

Post Processing Photoshop CS6