Atik Infinity frustration

[baldeliftman]

Can anyone please help I have just purchased a atik infinity mono first light on Jupiter I can get a good picture of it but it will not stack the images, all the boxes are ticked for stacking but it will not stack any, what am I missing here, what is the criteria for stacking many thanks

[RuralBill]

Hi,

what software are you using, is it the one that comes with the camera ?

Bill

[baldeliftman]

Hi yes it is

[MrOD]

I do not own infinity nor used software for it but i bet that stacking in this software is not intended for planets nor moon or sun, it is for deep sky objects. Maybe it just can not find any stars in the image to align properly each frame and therefore it refuses to stack it. Try some Deep sky objects and see if it will work.

[baldeliftman]

Right next task when clouds clear find a deep sky object I did note that on the topic before this one its about infinity and the picture of the desk top has more on advanced settings my settings stop at show tool tips where can the rest be is it because its a colour camera

[RuralBill]

I think that camera is really meant for on the fly live stacking of deep sky objects, a lot of people are doing the same with the Loadstar cameras at the moment, and I think I saw, on here some excellent results with quite short single exposures.

i am not convinced it will be any where near as good for planetary imaging.

cheers

Bill

[baldeliftman]

Hi just watching Dave Hudson on you tube with Jupiter and he was not stacking his picture was better but he was using a barlow before the camera I have a lot to learn?

[Carl Reade]

Hi I would agree Good for live view planets but not stacking them. You can record the video and run it through the usual software same as you would with a web cam etc.

Have you updated to the latest software on the Atik site it's now v1.3?

Carl

[baldeliftman]

many thanks for that Carl just updated the software I have the extra settings now next clear night cannot wait to try again

[Astrogate]

18 hours ago, baldeliftman said:

Can anyone please help I have just purchased a atik infinity mono first light on Jupiter I can get a good picture of it but it will not stack the images, all the boxes are ticked for stacking but it will not stack any, what am I missing here, what is the criteria for stacking many thanks

I would say that the Atik Infinity software was developed for deep sky objects mainly and it's stacking feature does a star registration. Since there are no stars when viewing the planets or moon, how can you expect it stack? I am not sure why you would need to stack a planet for live observing unless you are trying to combat the seeing conditions. If this is so, the software would have to incorporate an overlay method of stacking for planets & the moon. The Atik Infinity camera would make an okay camera for occasional planet and lunar observing but if this is your main interest then I would suggest using a dedicated camera for this type of purpose since you really want those pixels to be smaller for higher resolution and most importantly a faster frame rate.

Chris A

[2STAR]

On 4/4/2016 at 22:07, MrOD said:

I do not own infinity nor used software for it but i bet that stacking in this software is not intended for planets nor moon or sun, it is for deep sky objects. Maybe it just can not find any stars in the image to align properly each frame and therefore it refuses to stack it. Try some Deep sky objects and see if it will work.

Yes, I contacted Atik, the infinity is designed primarily for DSO , which it does very well.

[2STAR]

On 4/5/2016 at 15:50, Astrogate said:

I would say that the Atik Infinity software was developed for deep sky objects mainly and it's stacking feature does a star registration. Since there are no stars when viewing the planets or moon, how can you expect it stack? I am not sure why you would need to stack a planet for live observing unless you are trying to combat the seeing conditions. If this is so, the software would have to incorporate an overlay method of stacking for planets & the moon. The Atik Infinity camera would make an okay camera for occasional planet and lunar observing but if this is your main interest then I would suggest using a dedicated camera for this type of purpose since you really want those pixels to be smaller for higher resolution and most importantly a faster frame rate.

Chris A

Cheap 3mp chinese ccd does the trick

[Spacedout]

Yes I can conform after trying myself the other night, the Infinity is not designed for planets.  That's not to say it can't be done as I don't know for sure but I could not get a decent image of Jupiter.  I always got pleasing (to me at least) reslts with my SCB-2000.  Have a look at this video I took last year during a live broadcast.

 

 

[baldeliftman]

Many thanks for all your help on this ,the infinity is my first camera so I have a lot to learn, its only being visual before,only problem now is waiting for the clouds to clear.

[2STAR]

On 4/4/2016 at 22:19, baldeliftman said:

Right next task when clouds clear find a deep sky object I did note that on the topic before this one its about infinity and the picture of the desk top has more on advanced settings my settings stop at show tool tips where can the rest be is it because its a colour camera

I think it may be the beta software you saw on the desktop

[Hibou]

On 4/4/2016 at 22:30, baldeliftman said:

...atik infinity mono first light on Jupiter I can get a good picture of it but it will not stack the images...

You can of course use the standard Artemis Capture application that comes with the Atik Core Software to capture multiple frames for off-line stacking. It will work with the Infinity camera just as with other Atik cameras.

Infinity (and Starlight Live) need guide stars to correct for drift of the FOV over the longer total imaging times needed for faint objects. But there is also a valid reason why you might want to live stack for large objects like planets - so that you can start with a short exposure and continue exposing until you judge that the exposure is sufficient. When I asked Paul, the Starlight Live author to include an option to do that, he obliged with a setting of "Max pixel displacement=0" which simply stacks frames without registration. ChrisG at Atik did a similar thing for the Beta-3 Infinity Software with an advanced setting called "Calc Image Movement". He wrote "When deselected, the image stacking will assume that the object is in exactly the same place, and won't bother to calculate the shift and rotation. Thus the stacking will always succeed and you should be able to use it for your application". 

That will allow stacking even for Jupiter, but of course won't compensate for the atmospheric shimmering seen in Spacedout's video.

[baldeliftman]

Hi I did not have the calc image movement until I downloaded the newer version from the web site now just have to wait for the clouds to go to try it