Camera Banding? Can anybody tell me what and why this is?

6 replies339 views
Anderl avatar
Fellow friends of the night sky, 

I decided to use my time under the full moon to get some star clusters on my imx571 mono. 
this is a single green filter frame 300 sec, cooled to -10c, esprit 120, from tonight.
i have never seen such a pattern in any of my frames, neither the frame before nor the frame after have this pattern in it. 

time to get a new camera?

cs
anderl

andrea tasselli avatar
Just a glitch in the read-out. Possibly some form of external noise. S*** happens…
Anderl avatar
andrea tasselli:
Just a glitch in the read-out. Possibly some form of external noise. S*** happens...

Hey andrea,

thank you! 

you mean something like wlan, Bluetooth etc.?
i know, never ask llms if you want to know something but gpt told me that maybe the sensor got hit by cosmic rays
andrea tasselli avatar
Yes, never ask the AI scumbags about anything too technical. No cosmic ray hits, the periodicity suggest a signal modulation either from some part of the camera or across some form of antenna/cable. And, yes, I have seen this before but not with CMOS sensors. Easy to remove with digital filtering, tbh.
Dunk avatar
it could be the usb cable also - first thing I'd test.
Tim Ray avatar
I am thinking along with Dunk. Could be a cable or a hub.  Try a new cable from camera to NUC or ASIAir or Laptop. Try to avoid any other connection. External hub, thru mount cabling, etc should be avoided.  If the problem is corrected, then start the backwards troubleshooting to isolate what caused the problem… I have had horizontal lines from under exposed subs but never these vertical lines.  Good luck. Please keep us posted on your efforts!

CS Tim
Helpful Respectful Supportive
Oskari Nikkinen avatar
I have seen similar banding on subs that took place when the hard drive was in heavy use (was stacking a test image while capturing more data). Some sort of USB or data corruption gremlin. If this does not happen often then nothing to worry about, but do consider trying another cable like was already suggested.
Helpful Concise
Related discussions
New Camera, new Filterwheel and new Filters. Do the flats look ok?
Good evening fellow astro friends, I recently acquired a touptek 2600mm, toupteks new filter wheel and a set of antlia 4.5 sho filters + their pro lrgb set in 36mm unmounted. i have finally got all the adapters and the time to assemble my new setup. ...
IMX571 mono camera filter usage and potential imaging artifacts.
Jan 19, 2024
Mysterious star trailing solved: a cautionary tale of fan vibration with a fan cooled (especially ZWO) camera.
Suddenly after no problems with star shapes, the next night out they were just terrible! Below I show a gif comparing two 2 hr stacks, one with the good stars, and the next with elongated stars. In this example the distortion was vertical. But later ...
Fan vibration could cause the pattern artifact; check cooling system before replacing camera.
Nov 18, 2025