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First Light Atik 16HR

jcm

By jcm
in Imaging - Deep Sky

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jcm

jcm

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My 16HR arrived yesterday courtesy of Bern ( Modern Astronomy) courier delivery got round the postal strike.

I decided on this camera because it was a not too expensive for a decent effective sized chip 1392X1040 , also it seemed to match my 130mm F6 APO. When I opened the outer box I was surprised to see a quality "Pelican" carry case - looking good. When I opened the case my wife said - wow like the colour its about the same as the ******* I bought recently ( put in any appropriate item of female clothing in the space :D). I suppose many CCD cameras are black this one being a metallic red is a bit different.

The software/drivers loaded fine and the camera was immediately recognised - ( my old XP machine sometimes had a problem recognising stuff)

AstroArt plug-in was also installed as I am familiar with its operation and decided to use this rather than the supplied software. ( nothing wrong with the supplied stuff - looks easy to use). At first AstroArt could not find the camera but after rebooting all was well.

I attached a 2" to T-thread adapter after removing the 1.25" supplied nosepiece. Connected up the cables again - now in the obs - placed the Atik into the focuser. The only area of clear sky was near the Pleiades. Took a 10 second image at 3X3 binning to save download time , and on the screen appeared several large pale white circles. Although the focus was quite a way off the sensitivity of the camera showed the unfocused stars easily. All I had to do was put a box round one of them , alter the focus and I had a nice sharp image , this seemed much quicker than finding the focus with the DSLR , because you have to be quite near the focus point to see anything on the screen

I then went to full frame ( 1X1 binning ) and took 4 X 1min exposures. I also took some dark frames as it was now 12.45am I decided to pack everything away.

All things considered I was very pleased with this first go and hope to start using LRGB and Narrow Band ( H-alpha , O III ) filters soon.

The stacked image is shown below.

Second image No Darks as requested by Martin.

John

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post-13061-133877332258_thumb.jpg

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jcm

jcm

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Congrats jcm and thanks for sharing your first light :lol:

My Atik 16 (not HR) also arrived yesterday, courtesy of Ian King imaging.

You do realise this spell of cloudy skies will now be attributed to us :D

But I did get a gap in the clouds last night ( first day I had the camera) which must be a bit of a miracle these days.

John

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jcm

jcm

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Nice one John , good camera is,nt it , you will love it and be knocking out some lovely images

Rog

Yep , looking forward to doing some interesting "stuff" in the next few weeks subject to :D

Seems a bit strange posting a B&W image after all the colour images I have done. :lol:

John

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FLO

FLO

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My Atik 16 (not HR) also arrived yesterday, courtesy of Ian King imaging.

What software have you decided on Steve? about to buy some myself.... (do you stock Astroart?)

I shall be using Maxim DL CCD. It's expensive but I am guessing that I shall quickly become hooked on astro-imaging and I actually 'enjoy' image processing so would probably regret buying anything less. Ian King has AstroArt in stock. HTH :D

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Helen

Helen

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I shall be using Maxim DL CCD. It's expensive but I am guessing that I shall quickly become hooked on astro-imaging and I actually 'enjoy' image processing so would probably regret buying anything less. Ian King has AstroArt in stock. HTH :D

Thanks Steve. I'm trying to decide between AstroArt and Maxim at the moment (and had just about decided on AstroArt until this thread...). Advice I had suggested that AA has virtually all the functionality of Maxim but in an easier to use and muh cheaper package... Out of interest, what swung the balance for you?

Thanks

Helen

PS now downloaded demos of both, so if you hear frustration from S Wales its me trying to get to grips with two packages at the same time and within the demo deadline of 30 days for Maxim!!

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FLO

FLO

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I asked some imagers in the trade, posted a question or two on user groups and came to the conclusion that Maxim was pretty much state of the art, and they also have some useful instructional videos. I also like the idea of being able to add DSLR as a plug-in. I dare say AstroArt is also a fine piece of software too. I'll be interested to hear your opinion after you have played with the demos?

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