Atik Dusk - help!

[Jezphil]

I’m using a CCD camera and Atik Dusk (with Atik 460EX) for the first time so forgive them basic nature of these two questions…

1. I’m viewing what the camera sees by looking at the looped exposures and can alter the speed of the looping with exposure length and binning. So it’s not a ‘live view’ and there are delays between frames. Is this the only way of seeing what the camera sees? Does it not offer a live view?

2. The looped image window takes up less than a quarter of the display screen. It is tiny. When I have cross hairs displayed on the screen, the looped image window gets placed in the tope left quarter. Why is it so small? Should the rest of the frame be taken up with a live view? Why aren't the cross hairs over the centre of the looped image window?

Thanks in advance.

[carastro]

I can't help you with Dusk as I have not used it, but I have the same camera and use Artemis the predecessor of Dusk.

You won't get true live view but the speed of the looping makes it near as damn it especially if you bin for frame and focus.

In Artemis, the crosshairs on the image don't make the looped image move anywhere.  To be honest I had a discussion with Atik at Astrofest back in February about Dusk and I do have it on my Desktop, but I was complaining to them that a lot of the Good features of Artemis seem to have been removed in Dusk.  I can't remember what specifically now but I do recall Steve Hedges bringing up a crosshair and it was a tiny crosshair in comparison to Artemis which I absolutely love.  they have also taken away the Markers on Dusk which i use a lot, and his comment was "do people actually use these functions?"  "Yes they do I replied for frame and focus."

I would suggest you try to get hold of Artemis - much easier to use, Steve did assure me when I heard Dusk was coming out that Artemis would still be available when I and another user on here declare utter despair if Artemis became obsolete.  Hopefully you should be able to download it.  Or worst case scenario, I am SE London, you can come to me to install it (socially distanced of course). 

Only caveat to this, is Dusk may have some features you might want as Artemis doesn't do anything fancy, it just works. 

Carole   

 

 

 

Edited September 12, 2020 by carastro

[Davey-T]

1 hour ago, Jezphil said:

The looped image window takes up less than a quarter of the display screen. It is tiny. When I have cross hairs displayed on the screen, the looped image window gets placed in the tope left quarter.

In Artemis you can alter the size of the image in display options / zoom no idea about Dusk, tried it once and that was enough.

Dave

[Craney]

2:

In Dusk, if you hover the mouse over the top RHS of the display it gives you a menu with a few options over the location of the image box.   If you double click (I think) on the image box you have, it zooms in.

If you zoom in too much, go back to menu described above.

[Jezphil]

48 minutes ago, carastro said:

I can't help you with Dusk as I have not used it, but I have the same camera and use Artemis the predecessor of Dusk.

You won't get true live view but the speed of the looping makes it near as damn it especially if you bin for frame and focus.

In Artemis, the crosshairs on the image don't make the looped image move anywhere.  To be honest I had a discussion with Atik at Astrofest back in February about Dusk and I do have it on my Desktop, but I was complaining to them that a lot of the Good features of Artemis seem to have been removed in Dusk.  I can't remember what specifically now but I do recall Steve Hedges bringing up a crosshair and it was a tiny crosshair in comparison to Artemis which I absolutely love.  they have also taken away the Markers on Dusk which i use a lot, and his comment was "do people actually use these functions?"  "Yes they do I replied for frame and focus."

I would suggest you try to get hold of Artemis - much easier to use, Steve did assure me when I heard Dusk was coming out that Artemis would still be available when I and another user on here declare utter despair if Artemis became obsolete.  Hopefully you should be able to download it.  Or worst case scenario, I am SE London, you can come to me to install it (socially distanced of course). 

Only caveat to this, is Dusk may have some features you might want as Artemis doesn't do anything fancy, it just works. 

Carole   

 

 

 

Hi Carole

Thank you for this really helpful reply and kind offer - much appreciated. Understood re the looping and that clears up a big question for me. I'd seen some of the forum discussion on how Artemis had much better functions and it looks good in Atik's online tutorial. I don't know if Artemis is useable on a Mac which I'm using, and will check that out. There's a great cloudless night our way tomorrow (fingers crossed), so I'll see how I manage with Dusk for the time being.

[Jezphil]

42 minutes ago, Craney said:

2:

In Dusk, if you hover the mouse over the top RHS of the display it gives you a menu with a few options over the location of the image box.   If you double click (I think) on the image box you have, it zooms in.

If you zoom in too much, go back to menu described above.

I can't find this unfortunately. However, I just found that  dragging two fingers (laptop set up, no mouse) seems to give a zoom. The crosshairs also zoom off and away across the screen, so that's far from ideal. The only RHS of the display button/option is a square with for arrows in that re-centres the crosshairs. Thanks for your response - will try this out tomorrow night. 

Edited September 12, 2020 by Jezphil

[carastro]

Quote

Dusk, tried it once and that was enough.

Lol, echo's my sentiments dave.

Carole 

[Jezphil]

On 12/09/2020 at 17:27, carastro said:

Lol, echo's my sentiments dave.

Carole 

Hi Carole. Okay, I tried out Dusk last night and yes, it is really lacking, as you and others have helpfully pointed out above. I've always been a die hard Mac user, but picked up a PC this morning as so much astrophotography software is geared towards Windows PCs and I've finally relented (plus, my Mac was getting VERY dew-covered outdoors last night which was concerning). I've downloaded Atik Infinity for Windows, but it is the latest version which looks quite basic, like Dusk, with the same awful histogram. Please can I take up your offer of getting hold of the previous version of the software? Jez

[x6gas]

I am pretty sure that Artemis, AKA Atik Capture is still part of the core PC software distribution.  It's also available as a standalone here: https://www.atik-cameras.com/capture-software/

I don't think there is a Mac OS version which is why it may not have been included when you downloaded it to your Mac.

Let me know if you have any problems as I definitely have the zip file of the software distribution that includes Artemis Capture.

Cheers, Ian

[Jezphil]

30 minutes ago, x6gas said:

I am pretty sure that Artemis, AKA Atik Capture is still part of the core PC software distribution.  It's also available as a standalone here: https://www.atik-cameras.com/capture-software/

I don't think there is a Mac OS version which is why it may not have been included when you downloaded it to your Mac.

Let me know if you have any problems as I definitely have the zip file of the software distribution that includes Artemis Capture.

Cheers, Ian

Thanks Ian. This link leads to a page titled 'Capture' and has a button 'download capture for Windows'. All very promising, until you download it.  You get a file that offers a menu of options:  Dawn, Dusk, Infinity, but unfortunately nothing named 'Artemis' or 'Capture' which is bizarre. If you have a zip file, that would be brilliant!

[x6gas]

48 minutes ago, Jezphil said:

Thanks Ian. This link leads to a page titled 'Capture' and has a button 'download capture for Windows'. All very promising, until you download it.  You get a file that offers a menu of options:  Dawn, Dusk, Infinity, but unfortunately nothing named 'Artemis' or 'Capture' which is bizarre. If you have a zip file, that would be brilliant!

Ah sorry about that; I hadn't checked what was at the end of that link - my bad.

However, if you run the installer and install the core software you should find that Capture has been installed any way.  It should be installed in the default directory which is usually C:\Program Files (x86)\Atik Cameras

There should be an application file called ArtemisCapture.  Right click on that and select create shortcut, the system should tell you that you can't create a shortcut here and ask you whether you want it on the desktop instead and if you say yes an icon should appear on your desktop.

I have just tried it and it definitely works for me on the latest core software release for Windows from here: https://www.atik-cameras.com/software-downloads/

I hadn't remembered, but clearly Atik don't make it very easy to find!

 

[Jezphil]

1 hour ago, x6gas said:

Ah sorry about that; I hadn't checked what was at the end of that link - my bad.

However, if you run the installer and install the core software you should find that Capture has been installed any way.  It should be installed in the default directory which is usually C:\Program Files (x86)\Atik Cameras

There should be an application file called ArtemisCapture.  Right click on that and select create shortcut, the system should tell you that you can't create a shortcut here and ask you whether you want it on the desktop instead and if you say yes an icon should appear on your desktop.

I have just tried it and it definitely works for me on the latest core software release for Windows from here: https://www.atik-cameras.com/software-downloads/

I hadn't remembered, but clearly Atik don't make it very easy to find!

 

Ah!!! There it is! Lurking in the depths. No need to apologise - your help has been amazing. Thanks so much. 

[carastro]

Do you have Artemis now as l am away? Let me know if you still need any help from me. 
 

carole

[Jezphil]

On 14/09/2020 at 23:56, carastro said:

Do you have Artemis now as l am away? Let me know if you still need any help from me. 
 

carole

All solved now and it is up and running well. Thanks for all your help and advice! 

[carastro]

So what are you using now?

Carole 

[Jezphil]

52 minutes ago, carastro said:

So what are you using now?

Carole 

Artemis on a PC 👍

[carastro]

Great

[Jezphil]

On 16/09/2020 at 23:35, carastro said:

Great

I managed to do a real world comparison of Artemis and Dusk last night, dodging between a few clouds. Among other aspects, I think one of the great features of Artemis is the star marker function where you can store locations of stars from a previous session and match them exactly for another night's data gathering (as mentioned above by Carole). A brilliant feature, but this function was for some reason dropped for Dusk.  Looking at the sequencer function of Artemis, does it only allow you load in the same number of images for each sequence? So if you are leaving it set up to go through sequences for three narrowband filters, automatically changing the filter for the second and third sets, are you stuck with a set number of exposures for each sequence? i.e. the number  you have entered into the 'repeat count' window in the sequencer window? In other words, what if you wanted to vary repeat counts and do, say, 20 for Ha, 25 for OIII and 30 for SII?  It doesn't seem to allow a different number for each sequence. Or is this me being dumb? (it has been known!) 

Edited September 18, 2020 by Jezphil

[Hallingskies]

I think software folk get bored once they write stuff and it just works for their customers.  They then feel the need to change the things around and “update” stuff to make their own lives easier, whilst confusing and infuriating the end users who are perfectly comfortable with what they use.  It’s a shame that ATIK has caught the Microsoft disease. 

Artemis works.  Dawn doesn’t, at least not for me.  Why mess around?

[carastro]

Quote

So if you are leaving it set up to go through sequences for three narrowband filters, automatically changing the filter for the second and third sets, are you stuck with a set number of exposures for each sequence? i.e. the number  you have entered into the 'repeat count' window in the sequencer window? In other words, what if you wanted to vary repeat counts and do, say, 20 for Ha, 25 for OIII and 30 for SII?  It doesn't seem to allow a different number for each sequence. Or is this me being dumb? (it has been known!) 

That's correct, so what I do is, if say I want twice as much Lum than RGB for instance, I enter Luminance into the sequence twice.  L,R,G,B, L

Carole 

 

[Jezphil]

50 minutes ago, carastro said:

That's correct, so what I do is, if say I want twice as much Lum than RGB for instance, I enter Luminance into the sequence twice.  L,R,G,B, L

Carole 

 

Ah - yes, of course.  Got it. Nice solution. - sounds obvious now but I hadn't twigged. I did actually ask Atik about this and they simply told me Artemis 'has its limitations', so thanks for your answer as their response was, ahem, less than helpful.  Definitely sticking with Artemis now, especially with its star markers.

Re Dusk:  they said they'd kept it simple 'for new users'.  But yes, surely too simple, even for me.

[Tomatobro]

I tried Atik Dawn a while ago after I got my Horizon II OSC but could not get it to work. Artemis and Sharpcap were ok. It seemed to recognise the camera but non of the buttons worked.

 

[carastro]

BY the way - tip.  

When you are Looping and doing framing and focus, make sure you untick the autosave box in the Exposure box or you will end up with 100s of unwanted saved images.

I did some video tutorials on the use of Artemis.  It does sound though that you have got to grips with it already, but in case you want to browse through and see if there is anything useful.

 

 

 Carole 

Edited September 18, 2020 by carastro

[Jezphil]

11 hours ago, carastro said:

BY the way - tip.  

When you are Looping and doing framing and focus, make sure you untick the autosave box in the Exposure box or you will end up with 100s of unwanted saved images.

I did some video tutorials on the use of Artemis.  It does sound though that you have got to grips with it already, but in case you want to browse through and see if there is anything useful.

 

 

 Carole 

Just viewed these and they are super useful - thanks so much for posting. Plenty of  tips I didn't know about - in particular, how the negative function can be so useful for nebulas, and until watching this I hadn't understood the two sequencing order options - can now see how the 1,2...1,2...1,2 choice works, which looks like a great one to use. 

[carastro]

Glad they were useful, yes it took me a while to work some of those things out.  tip here and a tip there.  

Shame so many of these things have been taken away in Dusk. 

Carole