Atik 383l Amp Glow

[AlistairW]

Hello,

Got myself a second hand Atik 383l plus  a while ago, but only had a real chance to use it last night. Attached is a 10 minute sub in Ha. The question I have is the appearance (I presume) of amp glow bottom right. Is this correct for this camera ? - Will taking a set of flats (or darks ?) remove this ? - or maybe it's an issue with the Atik driver ? - I probably don't have the latest as I simply installed with the supplied disk.

Thanks

Alistair

[red dwalf]

there is a new driver on atik`s website but i don`t think that will be your problem, what temperature did you cool too ? and did you give it time to adjust ? these cameras can get a small amount of ice build up when cooled too fast, it does disappear when it has acclimatised, you should have taken another picture to see if the mark had shrunk, if it had i would say that was your problem.  

[red dwalf]

should say i wouldn`t be too worried if it does have a problem, the Atik guys are legendary with their after sales service, even for second or third user cameras, it`s not always free but it doesn`t cost the earth.

[silios]

+1 on frost or some other obstruction.

That dark area on the bottom doesn't look like amp glow (i haven't seen any of that form) and due to weird shape of it, formed ice is a good bet i think.
 

[Oddsocks]

No, not amp glow, amp glow is a bright artefact, not a dark one, that is some kind of obstruction in the light path.

You will need to check that the camera shutter ( if fitted to this camera ) is fully opening and that there is nothing else in the light path that is partially obscuring the CCD.

Take the camera off the telescope and operate the camera while looking into the window, you will soon see if there is a problem.

If all is ok visually and with the camera back on the telescope take some indoor shots of a lit ceiling or wall with a white shirt or sheet of white printer paper over the front of the telescope, you should see a fully illuminated plain white image.

[red dwalf]

doing a visual check as discribed above, you should also be able to see if it is a frost issue, it can be hard to see as it`s so small but you can see it if there is any, i had a atik titan which would always produce a tiny droplet on the chip, you could just see it if you angled the camera correctly, it would clear after 3-4 minutes.

[AlistairW]

Thanks for the replies. I wasn't aware of frost being a possible issue, but I will do some tests, as I am fairly sure there isn't an issue with the actual camera. The ambient temp was around 10C and I cooled down to -10C in 10 minutes - is that too aggressive ?

Thanks

Alistair

[AlistairW]

I did take 10 subs each of 10 minutes using SGP. The first 8 have the same issue, however subs 8 and 9 appear fine. There was a glitch in the software in the night and I did have to resume the sequence before sub 8 started. So I am wondering if there was a software glitch somewhere ?

On the plus side I guess I means there is no obstruction, or actual camera issues.

(This might be my imagination, but the Frame and Focus module in SGP - is there an issue with this that might cause this, and the way round is to restart SGP  ? - (thought I read about this some time ago, but could be completely mistaken).

But also, it seems the knowledge I am being told is that whatever it is - it is not amp glow.

Thanks

Alistair

 

[Oddsocks]

Hi Alistair

Looking at the artefact, it is out of focus which means it is not immediately on top of the CCD detector and because it has "fuzzy" edges this means it is someway in front of the CCD detector so I think you can discount ice or water in this instance and it is unlikely to be an image processing fault.

My guess would be the software glitch left the shutter in an "undefined" position and the edge you see is the leading/trailing edge of said shutter, I haven't seen an Atik 383L but if it has the kodak 8300 CCD then the camera does have a shutter.

When the camera boots up it probably does a "test shutter" position and uses this position as a ref for the rest of the that cycle of imaging, if this position becomes corrupted by a hardware or software glitch then the shutter will not stop in the fully closed or fully open position but will be slightly offset until you reboot the camera. AFAIK this "shutter ref position" info is held inside the camera in volatile memory. 

SGP only sends ASCOM commands to the camera driver i.e. open shutter, close shutter, download image, set filter etc and the camera driver sends the commands to the camera, unlikely that SGP could be at fault here, most likely an inside the camera hardware or software glitch.

If it happens again turn off cooling and disconnect from the camera in SGP then just cycle power to the camera alone and reconnect in SGP then try again.

[Singlin]

Try blowing at the shutter and then ever so slightly close the shutter with a pair of tweezers when the camera is powered up.

It could be just slightly stuck dew to dust or fine filaments.

[ChrisLX200]

As above, it looks very much like a shutter blade that has stuck partially closed - sticky blades are a known issue with this camera.

ChrisH

[AlistairW]

Thanks for the replies. That does make sense that it is the shutter blade. I did a couple of shots of the sky this morning, and they looked completely white - as expected. There was a small 'glow' to the bottom right, but nothing like what I was having. So I think there was either a mechanical problem, or the shutter somehow got in to an unknown position via a glitch somewhere. Seems to have corrected itself. But I have also learnt a bit about frosting too as a result of this post, so I will be vigilant for that too :-)

Thanks

Alistair

 

[Mister E]

I had a similar issue with my Atik 383L a few weeks ago while setting up.

Didn’t have an issue with my setup images until I realised I hadn’t turned on the cooling, as soon as I turned it on and the CCD temp hit -20C it appeared, dark shadow bottom right hand corner.

After going into panic mode  I notices its size was reducing after every subsequent test exposure until it finally disappeared.

Only every had it happen the once and I put it down to dew forming on the CCD which then turned to ice after rapid cooling.