The purpose of these systems is to carry out All or Full Sky surveillance of the night or day sky, and in a continuous fashion. It is possible to assess, in real time, the night sky quality, and to record fast phenomena (meteors and fireballs) or slower (satellites, rockets, noctilucent clouds, zodiacal light, aurora, airglow ....).
Thanks to its high sensitivity, this system can record a very good image quality of the night sky, while producing images of stars that will not be trailed by natural Earth rotation, no star tracking is required.
See HERE a real time view of some of our ALL SKY camera running worldwide.
Here is a PDF file describing how our ALL-SKY camera can be used for (application fields)
Ordering information :
• Please contact us for information and pricing concerning this camera.
IMPORTANT : PLEASE Click on the image to get full resolution image, all images presented hereafter are reduced to fit this page. All images have been recorded in a dark site in France, with some cities located 45 km apart.
ALL images are raw, no dark frame removed, outdoor temperature was +9°C
To keep the price as low as possible, this camera does not have dome heating system to prevent dew from developing, nor auto-iris, to get
such features please look at our OMEA camera web page.
Two cameras type are proposed to accommodate customer requirements
| Name |
Sensor |
Fisheye circle
"Illuminated" pixels |
Detector resolution |
Field of view |
Pixel Scale |
Daylight
imaging |
Production
Status |
| ALPHEA 4M |
Monochrome |
3.8 Million pixels |
3840 x 2160 pixels |
180° x 180° |
4 arcmin/pix |
Yes |
New! |
| ALPHEA 4C |
Color |
7.9 Million pixels |
3000 x 3000 pixels |
180° x 180° |
2.75 arcmin/pix |
Yes |
New! |
Parameter |
Value |
Field of view |
180° x 180 °
See images above to assess this performance |
Camera resolution |
ALPHEA 4M - 3800 x 2100 (8 Mpixels) 2.9 x 2.9 µm pixel
ALPHEA 4C - 3500 x 3500 (12 Mpixels) 2.0 x 2.0 µm pixel
All Backside illuminated CMOS sensor (BSI) Ultra low readout noise.
No mechanical shutter - All cameras have rolling shutter |
ADC resolution |
12 bits
|
Video stream |
(USB 2.0) ALPHEA 4M : 7 fps and ALPHEA 4C : 3 fps
AVI output or snap image mode |
Exposure time |
From 32µs to many hours of exposure (all sky mode, typically 30s to 60s) |
Gain |
Variable (from 1e- / ADU down to 0.05 e- / ADU) |
| Gamma |
Tunable +50 units to -50 units |
| Cooling |
Passive from camera body dissipation, no active cooling |
Image download time |
< 20 ms |
Control software |
ALCOR SYSTEM Windows AllSky software supplied at no additional costs, SDK on request |
Operating system |
Windows (10 & 11) 32 & 64bits
Linux (contact us, SDK available) |
To PC interface |
USB 2.0 / 20 m length cable, perfectly reliable operation. |
Top dome heater |
Manual enable/disable operation from the user, heat is injected to remove dome dew. |
Power supply |
PC powered, 24V and 0.1A |
| Bandwidth |
ALPHEA 4M : 400 to 950 nm ALPHEA 4C : 400nm to 700 nm
|
| Daylight imaging |
ALPHEA 4xx Capable |
| Auto-iris |
None, fixed F/1.6 lens
Day operation possible with ALPHEA 4xx with lowest gain and exposure time (32µs)
|
| Focus adjustment |
None, factory tuned |
Other informations |
Tight to bad weather conditions (rain/snow), anodized aluminum casing, acrylic dome, water tight connectors / IP67 protection |
Weight |
1.5 kg |
Dimensions |
125mm diameter, 120 mm height |
Operating temperature range |
from -40°C to +45°C |
Click image to get full res.
Camera support can be supplied (picture below), so that to minimize time for installation. This is an optional feature. Please ask for it, if needed.
ALPHEA camera is our entry market camera, low cost, featuring high sensitivity camera using backside illuminated CMOS sensors
Application fields of this camera are (in a nutshell) :
- Astronomy
Cloud cover and transparency map, Robotic telescopes farms, no mobile parts.
- Free Space Optics (FSO) communication
Cloud cover and transparency map, Site survey, Network architecture design and balancing
- Atmospheric studies
Atmospheric transparency, urban light pollution monitoring, northern lights, passive optical sensing. Network of AllSky camera
- Defense
Realtime and passive optical detection for satellite re-entry, planes and drones. Network of camera to cover larger territory
- Solar Power
Cloud cover, transparency map, site survey and power production forecasting.
Software
Either our custom made Alcor System software or
SDK can be provided so that any custom algorithm can be implemented by the end user.
Please click here to know more.
ALPHEA - ALL SKY CAMERA
What's in the box :
* Camera body
* USB 20 m cable (with 2 repeaters)
* 20 m power cable
* 24V Power supply unit
ALPHEA 4C
ALPHEA 4M
Night image, dark Sky (Pises Observatory), no Moon, 30 sec exposure. 7.9 millions pixels circle image. Raw image with no processing.
Night image, dark Sky, no Moon, 30 sec exposure. 7.9 millions pixels circle image. Raw image with no processing. no IR cut filter (400 to 950 nm bandwidth)
This place is not very dark (SQM at mag 19 /arcsec²), a large city is present on the South of this place
SPECIFICATIONS
