ZWO ASI2600MC Duo USB 3.0 Cooled Color Astronomy Imaging Camera with Built In Guider

The ZWO ASI2600MC Duo is the next generation of ZWO cameras.  This new generation includes a built in guider chip making your rig more compact and user friendly.

The ZWO ASI2600MC DUO is a high performance camera for imagers looking for an APS-C style sensor.  The back lit Sony IMX571 will provide you with a more satisfying imaging experience.

This camera represents a new direction for ZWO.  The ASI2600MC Duo has the convenience of the built-in guide chip.  Gone are the days of a seperate guide scope, off axis guider, additional guide cameras, and more wires than you know what to do with.  The Duo is the convience of all that gear built into the camera making it a much more compact and seamless setup.

ASI2600MC Pro uses Sony’s latest back-illuminated IMX571 APS-C format native 16-bit ADC sensor. It has an ultra-high 14 stops dynamic range, ultra-low 1.0e readout noise and an innovative breakthrough resulting in zero amp-glow. It also has an incredible full well capacity of up to 80ke. It is a camera born from the appeal of astrophotography lovers.

IMX571 backlit sensor:

Sony’s back-illuminated CMOS image sensor improves sensitivity and noise reduction – the key factors to enhancing image quality, while radically realigning their fundamental pixel structure from front-illumination to back-illumination. It has retained the advantages of CMOS image sensors such as low power consumption and high-speed operation.

With a conventional front-illumination structure, the metal wiring and transistors on the surface of the silicon substrate that form the sensor’s light-sensitive area (photo-diode) impede photon gathering carried out by the on-chip lens. A back-illuminated structure minimizes the degradation of sensitivity to optical angle response, while also increasing the amount of light that enters each pixel due to the lack of obstacles such as metal wiring and transistors that have been moved to the reverse of the silicon substrate.

Sony has newly developed a unique photo-diode structure and on-chip lens optimized for back-illuminated structures, that achieves a higher sensitivity and a lower random noise without light by reducing noise, dark current and defect pixels compared to the conventional front-illuminated structure.

The ASI2600MC Duo is equipped with a USB 3.0 transmission interface and a built-in 512MB DDR3 cache to ensure stable and secure data transmission. Under long exposure, it effectively avoids frame dropping and greatly reduces the glow effect caused by slow reading speed.

The Guide Sensor:

The SC2210 sensor taken from the ASI220MM Mini camera features very high sensitivity. The QE peak value reaches 92% at 500nm. The readout noise is as low as 0.6e. As the new generation of guide sensor, it has achieved great results in guiding, proved by hundreds of astrophotographers.

ZWO has all their information available for download on their website in a perfectly laid out section. Check it out here for software and drivers and here for manuals and guides.

One of the coolest gadgets, and a neccessity according to a majority of ZWO users, is the ASIair Plus.  It is an all-in-one wireless camera solution.  The ASIair Plus gives you control of focus, image taking, plate solving, and computerized mount control with the included SkySafari bridge all controlled by your smartdevice or tablet.  It really is pretty awesome.

Tech Details: