Atik 1HS II vs SPC880?

[Russe]

Morning,

I'm reading mobberley's book for planetary webcam imaging and he goes on about an atik 1HS II which I found an old advert for on ABAS. It was sold for 70£ and thus I'm wondering whether anyone out here compared the two with each other. And, is it still possible to buy this atik camera new?

[Cornelius Varley]

I think they ceased production of the 1HS II a few years ago.

Peter

[Russe]

Yeah, seems they r selling the blue Titan now for the low end market for 500 odd£

[Andrew*]

The Atik 1HS is basically a fan-cooled 1/4" chip webcam with a 480x640 resolution. Sensitivity is excellent and dark current is not too bad. However, it is only 8bit, which is way more limiting than 16 bit. The camera requires USB and parallel ports for long exposure.

The Atik 2HS is similar to the 1HS but wiht larger pixels. Sensitivity is very good.

Both cameras will be more sensitive than the 880 as they are mono. A good bet for guiding, but not much else... Frame-rate up to 30fps, but really only 5fps gives a clean, full res picture, so not much good for planets.

Andrew

[Gina]

Seems to me that the Titan is neither one thing nor the other. Not good enough for planetary and pretty poor for DSO.