Ecliptic Camera: HQ16 Narrow View — Peter Grecian
Raspberry Pi HQ Camera (IMX477) + 16 mm lens · 22° × 17° narrow view
Commissioning Status Commissioning
The HQ16 camera was mounted on 13 October 2026, replacing the retired v1 camera on the windowsill rig. Fitted with a manual 16 mm C-mount lens, it looks directly into the southern sky around Aquarius and Capricornus, providing a narrow high-resolution view embedded within the wider ecliptic field.
Night capture streams 60 s FITS frames directly to local SSD storage on the Pi. Frames are then shipped across the network to bigstore on muppet where nightly calibration, star alignment, and stacking take place. Nights are published from 13 October 2026, while focus and the lens mount are still being commissioned.
Nights
First Light Comparison (13 October 2026)
Single 60 s exposures from 13 Oct 2026, 22:30 London time. Left: the v3 Wide view showing the 100° field with the HQ16 field outlined in yellow. Right: the HQ16 frame, resolving the 22.4° × 16.9° region with 19.9 arcsec/photosite resolution.
Solved Optical and Sensor Specifications
SensorSony IMX477 (12.3 MP, 1.55 µm photosite pitch, 4056 × 3040 resolution), 12-bit RGGB Bayer
Optics16 mm C-mount lens, manual focus, fixed aperture
Solved Plate Scale19.9 arcsec per photosite (39.8 arcsec per 2×2 binned pixel)
Field of View22.41° horizontal × 16.85° vertical (centre RA 332.5°, Dec -10.0° at transit)
Resolution GainMore than 5× sharper than the v3 Wide field (19.9″/px vs 105.4″/px)
Buffer and StorageBuffered to local SSD (/mnt/ssd/eclipticam-buffer/hq16), processed on muppet