M57 Widefield

[Paxo]

Managed to get an hour or so last night, only got dark enough at around midnight. Got a chance to try the new Atik 314L camera briefly, and first impressions are it is an extremely good camera. Very low noise and very easy to use software. The widefield image of M57 below is presented as 10 (60 second) subs, taken through a WO FLT110 unguided EQ6 Pro, stacked in DSS, no darks or lights used (all part of the experiment). A quick curves tweak in PS CS3 and we have the M57 widefiled shown below:

(click to enlarge)

Here's praying for more clear skies soon to try out in LRGB.

Please enjoy (sorry its only greyscale).

Steve..

[MikeD]

Great result Steve, pin sharp stars and nice detail.

Looks like the CCD is keeper

There's nothing wrong with greyscale but looking forward to the added colour.

Mike.

[lunator]

Steve

Good results for a 1st run

Looking forward to seeing the colour image

Cheers

Ian

[jgs001]

Good stuff Steve.

[steppenwolf]

Some nice detail with sharp stars as well!

[Starflyer]

Great image Steve, looking forward to seeing some more from that new camera of yours.

Ian

[algol]

really nice, i've seen it twice and can't find it since lol.

[LostNSpace]

Nice image of M57 Steve for a 1st attempt with your new ccd camera......Good detail, central star visible, pinpoint stars, what more could you ask for

Mark

[Sam]

That's a quality image Steve - very nicely focused and a heap of detail in the ring - you must be very pleased!

[anthony]

Showing quite a bit of detail in the ring. Well behaved stars right across the field. A very pleasing first light

Anthony

[Paxo]

Thanks folks, very happy how this turned out, and even more happy how easy it was to do. Just took some darks (raining stair rods outside at present), time to see what difference the darks make, if the literature is anything to go by, very little, but time will tell.

Steve..

[Beyond_Vision]

Very nice capture Steve what resolution is the camera?

Regards

Kevin

[centroid]

Nice sharp image Steve.

Dave

[Paxo]

Very nice capture Steve what resolution is the camera?

Regards

Kevin

Kevin,

The camera resolution is 1391 x 1039 pixels at 4.5um pixel size. This gives an image of approx 2.5MB for unbinned exposures. The Atik 314L is cooled to 25C below ambient and has extremely low noise. The software that comes with it is very basic but adequate for initial trials, it ships with Maxim DL plugins as well.

Looking forward to further trials (and tribulations).

Steve..

[MartinB]

That's a lovely clean image. Those pixels are tiny so it will work really well with small refractors. Also a great match with your FLT110. You wont go wrong with that camera Steve