Extremely High Resolution of 1600 x 1200 Pixels
With its extremely high resolution of 1600 x 1200 pixels, the DBK 51AG02.AS is ideally suited to capture detailed images of the night sky, which demand the finest precision. The camera ships with IC Capture.AS, a comprehensive software package with which you can capture lossless and uncompressed images sequences and write them to disk as AVI files, or as a series of singular bitmaps.
Color Interpolation
For visualization applications, it does not make sense to view the RAW image stream from the CCD chip. It must be interpolated, before it may be viewed or saved in common formats. IC Capture.AS perform color interpolation, thus reducing the load on the DBK 51AG02.AS's processor. Should, on the other hand, you prefer that the camera itself performs color interpolation, you can select the appropriate option in IC Capture.AS. This enables the transfer of data to reach the camera's maximum of 15 FPS. Finally, if you do not require color interpolation at all, you can turn it off completely and the image stream is written to disk in RAW format.
Sony ICX274AQ 1/1.8 " CCD Chip
The DBK 51AG02.AS ships with the color Sony ICX274AQ progressive scan CCD chip. With its 1/1.8 " format, the CCD chip produces a resolution of 1600 x 1200 pixels. Even at very long exposure times - up to 60 minutes exposure are possible - noise is minimal. Thanks to this extremely high quality, the Sony ICX274AQ CCD chip is also often used in other scientific, industrial and medical image processing applications.
No Compression, No IR Cut Filter
The DBK 51AG02.AS does not compress the video stream it outputs - the video data that is captured by the CCD chip is outputted directly by the GigE connector. Similarly, the camera does not have an IR cut filter, a color filter, nor an other kind of electronic filter. The camera is, therefore, ideally suited to capturing very true-to-life images of the night sky.
High Speed Data Transfer Via GigE
In order to transfer the vast amount of data created by the stream of uncompressed and lossless color images to the host PC, you need a very high speed bus. Hence, the DBK 51AG02.AS is fitted with a fast GigE connector.
Included Software
The DBK 51AG02.AS ships with the device driver IC WDM GIGE TIS and the camera control and image acquisition application IC Capture.AS. Both of these run on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 (32 and 64 bit).
