Invidious

After seeing that some people had claimed having some success cooling ZWO planetary cameras (someone even sells a rather expensive "Active Cooling Kit" for ZWO planetary cameras...), I gave it a try. My setup consisted of a Peltier module, a heat sink, a fan, and a control system (I applied some thermal paste between the Peltier module and the body of the camera). The result is out: These cooling kits do NOT work. Like, at all! In spite of doing a great job at cooling the body of the camera (it was really cold!), the sensor temperature (reported by the ZWO driver) did not change all that much, and darks had pretty much the same amount of noise (measured in PixInsight) whether the cooler was on or off. This did not surprise me all that much to be honest. The sensor is in contact with neither the Peltier module nor the body of the camera. The PCB that it is soldered onto is actually a very good thermal insulator. Oh well. I wasted a few dollars and a couple of hours. But the lesson here is that you should never take what you read in forums as gospel. There is a lot of BS in this hobby, and we have to call it out when we see it. Anyway, onto the next project now... Clear skies, everyone!

5 months ago | [YT] | 23

@lenauwu2874

Your results are interesting to me as I once created a zwo cooler with a custom 3d printed bracket to provide pressure between the heatsink and the tec- module and was able to get temps of -20c below ambient. The few things that were different is my heat sink was much bigger and a large fan was also attached. It was able to cool the sensor but not very efficiently as it used 25 watts an hour which drained by batteries very quickly and was rather heavy. In my opinion it's possible but has some drawbacks and requires a decent amount of engineering and work to be effective.

5 months ago | 0