ToupTek SkyEye26AC Plus Colour Cooled Camera

The ToupTek SkyEye26AC Plus is a cooled colour astronomy camera with Sony’s IMX571, the APS-C sensor behind many of the most widely used deep-sky cameras. It gives 26 megapixels of 3.76 µm pixels with a 16-bit output and no amp glow, so dark frames are clean.

The sensor needs a corrected field of about 28 mm, which most modern flatteners and reducers cover. Refractors and astrographs from roughly 300 to 1000 mm suit it well: at 500 mm it samples at about 1.55″ per pixel.

Two-stage cooling takes the sensor up to 43 °C below the air temperature, the deepest in the SkyEye Plus range. It holds the set point you choose, so dark frames can be reused from night to night.

Choose the window when you order. The IR-cut version is for normal colour imaging. Clear AR-coated glass lets infrared through, for use with your own filters in front of the camera, such as a dual-band or UV/IR-cut filter.

USB hub: one cable back to the computer

The back of the camera has a four-port USB 2.0 hub. The filter wheel, guide camera and focuser plug into it, so only one USB 3.0 cable runs back to the computer. A 512 MB buffer holds each frame while it transfers, so a slow USB link or a busy laptop doesn’t drop frames.

The camera runs from 12 V. USB doesn’t power it, and ToupTek recommends a 5 A supply when the hub is in use.

Dew, tilt and back focus

The sensor sits in a sealed, dry chamber, and the front window has a heater with four power settings. Three sets of push–pull screws in the body correct sensor tilt without a separate tilt plate.

Back focus is 17.5 mm from the M54 thread. The supplied 21 mm and 16.5 mm extenders bring it to the standard 55 mm used by most flatteners and reducers. Take the front adapter off and it drops to 12.5 mm, which helps when an off-axis guider and filter wheel have to fit in the same space.