Player One Apollo-M MAX USB3.0 MONO Astro Camera, Sensor D=17.6 mm

Player One Apollo-M MAX SW astro camera for deep sky, sun and planets

The Player One Apollo-M MAX is a powerful MONO astro camera with the modern SONY IMX432 sensor. Due to the large pixels the camera offers a very high sensitivity and is especially suitable for somewhat slower telescopes. With long focal length telescopes, the camera is equally well suited for lunar, planetary and solar photography.

Deep-Sky-Astrophotography
The large sensor with 17.6 mm diagonal makes the camera well suited for photography of nebular objects, star clusters and galaxies. The Sony sensor is very sensitive, so they can image faint objects well in just a few minutes. The large 9 µm pixels make the camera suitable for telescopes with focal ratios of f/5 and fainter.

Moon and planetary photography
Due to the large 9 µm pixels, the focal length should be extended by Barlow lenses or eyepiece projection. We recommend an effective focal ratio around f/30 to f/40 to achieve good resolution. This can be achieved very well with good barlow lenses.

Sun and Moon are completely shown up to approx. 990 mm focal length. However, bear in mind that this leaves little room for tracking inaccuracies, which can cause the object to drift partially out of the field of view.

Sun photography
Despite the large pixels, the Player One Apollo-M MAX is very well suited for photographing the sun, both in white light and in H-alpha. Especially because H-alpha photography often requires artificially lengthening the focal length to achieve a practical aperture ratio, the large 9 µm pixels are not a disadvantage. A big advantage is that the IMX432 sensor does not have the problematic "banding". Against the Newtonian rings, in solar photography, the sensor tilting helps, which the Player One Apollo-M MAX offers as well.

Use as autoguider
At only 180 grams, the Player One Apollo-M MAX is a lightweight. It puts hardly any strain on the focuser. Of course, the camera offers the ST-4 autoguiding interface. A 2 meter autoguiding cable is also included.

Anti-reflective clear glass filter protects the sensor from dust
The clear glass filter prevents dust from getting to the sensor. It also lets UV and infrared through, so you can also do infrared photography with the camera. You have full control over what light hits the sensor with the right choice of contrast filters, nebula filters, or UV/IR blocking filters.

DPS technology against "Hot and Dead" Pixels
The DPS (Dead Pixel Suppression) analyzes dark shots and selects the interfering pixels. In the shots (Light), these spurious pixels are overwritten and then no longer appear. The image becomes smoother. The technology works similarly to a dark frame.

Air cooling - reduces sensor temperature
During shooting, the sensor heats up. The PCS dissipates the heat from the sensor via a thermal pad. This reduces the sensor temperature by up to 15 degrees compared to cameras without PCS.

Here you can find drivers, software, a manual for the camera and hints for solar photography

The native driver can be downloaded from here.

Very popular for planetary imaging are SharpCap (free or paid) and FireCapture (free).

For control via ASCOM, please install the ASCOM platform and then the ASCOM driver .

For control via DirectShow, please install the DirectShow driver. You can then test the camera with AMCAP.

You can download the user instructions from here.

A guide to successful solar photography with "pre and post processing" can be found at this external link: Solar photography

large scope of delivery:

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Safety informations: PDF Download