Player One Apollo 428M MAX Pro Mono Cooled Camera

The Player One Apollo 428M MAX Pro is a cooled mono astronomy camera built around Sony’s IMX428 global-shutter sensor. It is made for the Sun and the Moon, and its cooling also makes it usable for deep-sky imaging.

A global shutter reads the whole frame at once, so seeing ripples and the International Space Station crossing the disc don’t distort the image. It runs at 51 frames per second at full resolution.

The 1.1″ sensor measures 14.5 × 9.9 mm. The whole solar disc fits on the short side at focal lengths up to about 1,000 mm. The 4.5 µm pixels give about four times the resolution of the Apollo-M MAX Pro on the same frame size.

Full well is 25,300 electrons, rising to about 100,000 in hardware 2 × 2 binning. Read noise falls to 1.4 e⁻ at high gain.

Two-stage cooling holds the sensor 35–40 °C below the air temperature, and a heater keeps dew off the window. Tilt is set with the front three-point plate, and a rear four-point plate is available. The carbon fibre body weighs 420 g and has a 512 MB buffer.

The cooler runs from 12 V. The power supply is not included: Player One recommends one rated at 5 A or more. Only use the camera on the Sun with a proper solar filter, Herschel wedge or solar telescope.