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Maybe someone has a good advice what to do now. A brief (but heavy) rain shower came in while I was imaging and the camera got wet. I did not realize it first, but since then the images are majorly flawed. A major gradient at the right edge of the image (especially when I filter blue) can be seen as well as a dark fringe in the lower left area (especially in Hα). When I image in OIII the stars have now a bar (like a spike) across them. I already took the front glass plate off since I thought this one might have been the culprit (I saw rain drops on it after I was getting the setup back inside), but no changes, the problem must be the camera itself. Did anybody else have this problem, and if so, what can be done to correct this? Or is the camera ready to be buried? Uwe |
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Hi Uwe I'm sorry to hear that. The first thing that came to my mind while reading your post is the dessicant tube. You should have one, you can put a dessicant tablet inside it and screw it on the side of the camera, it should "suck" the humidity from the camera chip and nearby areas. Also replacing the dessicant tablets inside the camera would be a good idea. If you have doubts about which piece of equipment I'm talking about, you can check this thread I've made one year ago on CN: https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/575382-need-help-identifying-this-piece-of-equipment/ PS - it is weird thou that the problems are different from a filter to another... did you check they didn't get dirty during the rain shower? |
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I would suggest that you clean the filters and the glass on the sensor very well and give it another try. Also, make sure that you change the desiccant after the cleaning is completed as Andrea has also suggested. I have cleaned the glass on the sensor many times on my ASI-1600 without problems. Good Luck, Miguel  |
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Thank you Andrea and Miguel! I did not even know that there were some desiccant tablets inside the camera, I definitely will look into that and I will watch the video (I am at work now, hence need to postpone this to tonight ;-)). I am also a little bit surprised about the different filter behaviors, especially the spikes in OIII. Maybe I am just not seeing them in Hα and they are there as well. And the dark fringe. I will take some images tonight and post them (good weather assumed, otherwise I will just start looking into drying things up). The filters were not out at the time of the rain (at least not the Hα and SII, but the OIII might have been). I already cleaned all of them, plus the glass in front of the camera sensor (I actually took it off the camera, cleaned it in the hope that this is the culprit, but wasn't unfortunately). No images for a while from me :-( :-( |
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Uwe, The glass that I mentioned that you need to clean is not the round one that can be removed without opening up the camera, but the rectangular piece of glass that sits right on top of the sensor. You may think it is a bare sensor but it is not, it is covered with glass, the front of the camera should be removed before it is carefully cleaned. Let me know if you need more help or if you need information on how to best clean the sensors glass. Miguel |
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| Ah! Ok, I did mix that up. It does not look like that it has any problems, but I will check that again! Thank you Miguel! I posted this in another thread, what is carefully cleaning? My main lens of my telescope has quite some pollen on it, sticky on top! Do you have a suggestion how to clean this one? Meaning yes, I do need some help with cleaning :-)! |
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Andrea, I visited the link and I see now what this desiccant part is, that is already good :-). The manual refers to: "The suggested way to clean them is try to blow them away with a manual air pump. To cleanthe dust on the sensor you will need to open the camera chamber. We have a very detailed instruction on our website: https://astronomy-imaging-camera.com/manuals/"; This link does not exist anymore. Do you have eventually a copy of this document? I wonder why they took this off. Never mind ... I found it! That gives me something to work on! Thanks again Andrea! |
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Try watching this video to see how to clean you sensor glass. The video explains how to cleans the sensor in a DSLR but most of the information is good for your astro-cam too.. Before cleaning the sensor be sure that everything else is clean and dust-free first so that once you finish cleaning the sensor you can put everything back together again without introducing more dirt and dust. In your case, I would recommend a dry clean followed by a wet clean. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbJaR0xE1YY I'm not sure what should be done about the sticky pollen on you telescope lens. Miguel |
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| Thank you Miguel, helpful video indeed! I have a lot to do now, but if it helps I will be more than happy! Time to get on it now! |
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I hope you'll sort this problem out, keep us updated!  |
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There is indeed an update! Well, it is kind of embarrassing, but I somehow was mentally blocked when I looked at the results. I actually wanted to post my images that I took, maybe getting some advises what might be wrong with the camera when I realized that it is not the camera that has a problem, it is the front lens of my scope!! Well, what I did was to take an image of Deneb, 3 minute exposures, with OIII filter. As before the "bar" through the star was clearly visible. So I wanted to make sure that it is the camera, so I rotated the camera ONLY by 90 degrees and took the same image (actually kept my guider online during that :-)). So when I processed the images I saw the bar being rotated as well, 90 degrees roughly. So my FIRST conclusion was, aha, damn camera. I started cleaning and wiping (making it actually worse), took the same images, no change. Then at post time I leaned back, thought again about it, and realized, dang, if the camera would be the faulty part, the bar would stay in the same angle (I would have rotated the defect as well!!). So it is the front lens of my scope. I talked about this, the sticky pollen! When it got wet it actually created a big blob of goo all over it! So my next step will be, how to get rid of that. Probably using the same cleaning techniques that I saw on the YouTube link. I wonder though: is the front glass already part of the lens system, or is it just protective glass?? I do have an Explore Scientific, maybe someone knows about it. I will definitely contact Explore Scientific and maybe I can purchase a new front glass, that would be probably the best. AND ... never taking the telescope out again when the pollen is bad, I believe in aftermath this caused not just this incident, my images are once in a while at some spots blurry, probably the same reason! Thank you again for trying to help me out here, made me feel not so alone and it helped psychologically!! I will keep you posted with the lens cleaning efforts! |
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| I was absolutely sure that the problem is not in the camera, but the scope or reducer/ flattener. I would suggest use special cleaning wipes for optics, it is the best, pen and broom is useless if you have pollen, wet lense, dirty rain water etc on your optics. |
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| Will do Adel, do not want to kill the scope, that would be a shame! |
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Result after first cleaning efforts. I worried big time that I might screw up the lenses, but I guess I avoided it. Still not 100% ok, there will be a second round. https://www.astrobin.com/369654/?nc=user |
