dew formed
Looking at my camera during these hot days made me think: I was recording planetary images at 27°C ambient temperature, and the camera sensor indicated 35 degrees. A bit too hot for my taste. I put a cooling fan on and a bigger one near the camera, a few degrees went down. So I deployed the cavalry: a TEC1-12706 peltier element and a radiator to cool the camera down a bit. It may or may not have helped the image quality, given that the seeing is a much more impacting factor, and the seeing usually sucks, but the camera sensor went down 25°C. And dew formed (I hate these hot and humid days). The peltier’s nominal voltage is at around 12V, however, I figured that 12V is just too much to handle, so I dialed the voltage down to only 3.5V using an oversized (12A, to err on the safe side) buck converter and a 12V 3A mains power source. The camera’s body is aluminium, its back has four conveniently positioned M4 holes: an old computer’s radiator, some thermal grease, plus pliers and a RPi fan was all needed.
