Player One Mars 662M Mono Camera

The Player One Mars 662M is an uncooled mono astronomy camera built around Sony’s IMX662 sensor. It is a small, fast camera for the planets and the Moon, and it doubles as a guide camera.

The IMX662 replaces the IMX462 used in the Mars-M II. Its pixels are the same 2.9 µm, but each holds up to 54,000 electrons, so bright planets are less likely to saturate. Read noise falls to 0.7 e⁻ at high gain.

The camera runs at 108 frames per second at full resolution, and faster with a smaller region of interest. The pixels are best matched at around f/14. On a Celestron C8 at f/10 the field is about 9.5 × 5.4 arcminutes, plenty for any planet.

The sensor is sensitive in the near infrared, and the Super AR window passes light from 310 to 1100 nm. With an IR-pass filter you can still get sharp planetary detail in poor seeing.

For guiding, a 200 mm guide scope gives 3″ per pixel. A 256 MB buffer stops dropped frames on a slow laptop or a USB 2.0 port, and dark frames show no amp glow.