Our New Camera is Installed - What a Journey!

Our good friend (and NKAF science advisor) John Blackwell, the director of the Grainger Observatory at Phillips Exeter High School, once commented - "Don't ever do any upgrades!"  After a several month process of researching, purchasing, installing, and configuring our brand new SBIG AC455M camera (along with filter wheel, auto guider and adaptive optics) those of us at NKAF who have been involved with the process can attest to the truth of the advice - though we're glad we did!

Our previous camera, and Apogee Alta U16M was, sadly showing its age after almost 15 years of service.  Most software currently uses 64 bit architecture, and the U16 was not compatible with this standard.  We had been able to work around this short-coming, but unfortunately we encountered pretty consistent disconnection issues between the camera and the operating computer.  We had upgraded our computer a couple of years back (which created its own set of compatibility issues) but that didn't fix the connection problems with the camera.

So, after doing quite a bit of research, and consulting with the good folks at the Skynet network (which our telescope is a member of) we settled on the purchase, in January of 2025, of an SBIG AC455M and its associated add-ons. The AC455 uses a CMOS chip instead of the CCD chip that the U16 used - most cameras sold today use CMOS chips because they are less expensive, have larger pixel counts and are more energy-efficient.  The larger pixel count means greater resolution, but at the same time makes the images larger. To counter this, the connection to the computer is via a fiber-optic ethernet connection instead of the traditional USB connection.  The fiber-optic connection results in lightning fast download times as well as increased connection reliability!

The first challenge - physically connecting the camera to the computer. Finding the correct combination of connectors and spacers took quite a few phone calls to the Diffraction Limited, the manufacturer of the SBIG camera and the PlaneWave company, the manufacture of the telescope. In particular, we needed to get the distance from the back of the  telescope and the camera chip within the range of our focuser so that we could get clear images - a process complicated by the fact that our telescope, purchased in 2010, differs from the current models. But, we successfully hurdled this barrier!

Next, getting the varied pieces of software on our computer to "talk" to the telescope mount, the dome, the camera and all its associated components took several weeks of work, mostly by Jason Kaiser, our IT guru.  For those familiar with the Windows operating system, making sure we had all of the correct drivers and configuring the COM ports caused some hair-pulling moments!

The final piece involved the cooler on the camera, which chills the CMOS chip to reduce electric noise.  The cooler was working, but it didn't seem to hold the temperature steady, which our involvement with the Skynet system requires. A call to Diffraction Limited revealed that just after we purchased our camera, they redesigned the cooler to be more efficient. They sent us a free replacement kit, and aside from a few nervous moments disassembling the camera and replacing the parts, everything went as hoped. So now we have a fully operational camera on Astrometric Instruments' wonderful mount, and we're back in service as of September 2025. Quite a journey, but it looks like it was worth it!

WV