The peltier effect is a charge transfert (here energy) from one side to the other side of this component designed as the same way as a diode or a transitor. The heat located of the first side (called cold side)is transfered on the other one (called hote side), generating a refreshment on the cold side which is used for our Quickcam CCD cooling. More the heat on the hot side is evacuated (through cooling fan), better the cold side is refreshed. Take care of the heat evacuation to get a correct result.

This component is easily available at your electronic shop, but the easiest way is to buy a car fridge, designed to work on 12 Vdc. The one is used is coming from there...

Last details, this module need 50W, that's means a little more than 4 amps bellow 12 V, take care to not discharge your car battery fastly !

Here is the module, removed from the car fridge, fixed as a "sandwich" between two large heatsinks we could re-used later.

Warning the weld are delivate, and it seems very difficult to weld them back without damaged the module, if you are lucky, you could get after the dismantling a nice car fridge still usable (without cooling of course !)

The installation in a small plastic case (the same used for the CCD camera) will be perfect, one of the both heatsink will be re-used for the hot side, with two computer cooling fans (for processor cooling as pentium type), on the cold face another small heatsink to elarge the cooling surface.

The first tests are not so successfull, abiant temperature arround 27 deg C and the "glutton" (50 W...) provide just a fresh 15/16 deg C.

When I dismantled the module, the thermal grease (white color) were very strange , full dry !

Back to the electronic shop, and a large quantity of grease this time.

The cooling module is ready in order, just missing the CCD adaptation to get real deep sky photos.