Atik 383L+ mono

[CraigT82]

Today I received this CCD camera from a fellow SGLer, It' my first cooled CCD and and now just trying to get to grips with it and make sure everything works together with the software on my laptop (Stellarium, PHD2 and APT), all looking good so far.

 It's currently all set up in the garage and compiling a darks library at -15c (1 min to 10 min exposures in 1 min increments).

Does anyone have any hints or tips or anything I should know about using this camera. I've done a fair bit of reading around it and as can be expected there is quite a lot of conflicting info.  I'm particularly interested in making sure the lights I produce will be properly calibrated and have got an A3 Electroluminescent panel on order for making flats. 

I plan on contributing data to the HOYS project (thansk to @markse68 for giving me the heads up on that), trying some exoplanet transit detection and maybe some DSO imaging if I get time! 

 

[rnobleeddy]

I had the color version of this (which in comparison to the mono, receives terrible reviews), but in general

 

- expose for as long as you can, as it has a relatively high read noise, and longer exposures mean that isn't the dominant factor in your noise

- flats need to at least 2s to work around the mechanical shutter. For exposures much lower than this the shutter distorts the flat. I've got a very DIY approach to flats, using an old tablet screen, so I just stuck some more A4 paper sheets in front of it to create a dimmer light

[david_taurus83]

Hi Craig,

Id really take the camera off the scope and do your darks library with the cap on the camera sensor, metal preferably or tin foil lined plastic cap. Dont want to spend hours doing darks to find a small light leak has crept in. Of course it might be absolutely fine the way your doing it but its just a thought

If you've got Pixinsight, you could also shoot 1 set of long dark frames and use dark scaling to calibrate your flats and lights. I have the Atik 460 and I have a pair of master darks captured at 30 minutes each, 1x1 and 2x2. As long as the lights are shot at the same temperature and binning as the darks, you could use the 1 master dark for all exposures,  up to 30 minutes in my case.

[newbie alert]

Fantastic camera, I've heard that running it at slightly higher power reduces the snowstorm effect which calibrates completely out.. sure a friend of mine uses his at -20.. brilliant camera that some think because it's old it's past it's time, I think it was way ahead of its era.. hope I end up with one some day

[Sp@ce_d]

With my QSI683 (same sensor) I found dithering made more difference than using darks TBH. I use both so not saying don't do darks but I can get away with it (on the QSI) as dithering had a more notable improvement.

[CraigT82]

3 hours ago, rnobleeddy said:

expose for as long as you can, as it has a relatively high read noise,

Thanks for your input. Yes I have some some figures of the measured read noise at around 11e rather than the Atik quoted 7e. I did see that about shutter shadow and will aim for 2-4 secs exposures, I've got some a3 paper too to dim the EL panel. 

 

2 hours ago, david_taurus83 said:

Id really take the camera off the scope and do your darks library with the cap on the camera sensor, metal preferably or tin foil lined plastic cap. Dont want to spend hours doing darks to find a small light leak has crept in. Of course it might be absolutely fine the way your doing it but its just a thought

Thanks yes I did turn the lights off and shut the garage door so it was pitch black in there apart from the odd led on the various power bricks! The 383 has a mechanical shutter, is it possible for light to leak past that or get in behind it via the camera ports or cooling vent?  That is good to know about scaling the darks I didn't know about that, will have a look at PI. 

 

2 hours ago, Sp@ce_d said:

With my QSI683 (same sensor) I found dithering made more difference than using darks TBH. I use both so not saying don't do darks but I can get away with it (on the QSI) as dithering had a more notable improvement.

Thats good to know i thought dithering was more for DSLRs but if it helps with this sensor I will definitely  give it a go. 

[tomato]

The Atik 383 is fine Astro camera, we are all getting enthused by the latest CMOS cameras, but you only have to look at the vast library of superb images captured with this camera and other KAF 8300 offerings to know you have a first class instrument.

I use darks, flats and bias calibration frames with mine, +1 for making sure your flat exposures are of sufficient duration (1 use 2-3 secs).

I have found the cooler is not quite as efficient as the Moravian Instruments version, so make sure leave a bit of capacity spare when selecting your cooled set point temperature.

Enjoy!

[markse68]

Following with a great deal of interest as I received my new camera yesterday too and it has the same chip. Being a complete noob to all of this it took me hours to get the computer to connect to it (didn’t realise i had to download ascom too!) and i still haven’t got the filter wheel cooperating but i’m sure it will eventually.

How is your sensor doing for column defects etc Craig? Mine has a few but i’ve read it’s to be expected and they should calibrate out. I got a real shock with the first capture- had it lying on the bench with nothing attached and did a 10 sec exposure and got a white frame with densely packed stripes in various shades of grey 😳 A dark frame after that looked more reassuring thankfully!

Mark

[tooth_dr]

Hi Craig

I found that flats need to be 3.5 seconds or longer or the shutter shadow was visible.  I achieved this by using a sheet of 3mm grey acrylic over an A3 tracing panel on the lowest setting.  I then made up a set of dark flats of the same time.

I have tried dithering and not dithering.  If not dithering, darks are essential.  Results were similar, and I chose not to dither when I was running a dual rig.  You get surprisingly more data when you dont dither.

Cooling - I agree with tomato that the cooler isnt the most efficient of the KAF-8300 cameras.  I ran the camera at -20deg C, and it achieved this all year round.  However compared to the QHY9 mono that I had running at the same time, the cooler in the Atik used more power to maintain the -20 than the QHY9.

 

HTH

Adam.

 

[CraigT82]

12 hours ago, tomato said:

The Atik 383 is fine Astro camera, we are all getting enthused by the latest CMOS cameras, but you only have to look at the vast library of superb images captured with this camera and other KAF 8300 offerings to know you have a first class instrument.

I use darks, flats and bias calibration frames with mine, +1 for making sure your flat exposures are of sufficient duration (1 use 2-3 secs).

I have found the cooler is not quite as efficient as the Moravian Instruments version, so make sure leave a bit of capacity spare when selecting your cooled set point temperature.

Enjoy!

Thanks for the info, much appreciated. I was teetering on buying a new QHY174mm Coldmos but glad I went for the 383 in the end, I may still get the 174 at some point though as a solar camera

 

1 hour ago, markse68 said:

Following with a great deal of interest as I received my new camera yesterday too and it has the same chip. Being a complete noob to all of this it took me hours to get the computer to connect to it (didn’t realise i had to download ascom too!) and i still haven’t got the filter wheel cooperating but i’m sure it will eventually.

How is your sensor doing for column defects etc Craig? Mine has a few but i’ve read it’s to be expected and they should calibrate out. I got a real shock with the first capture- had it lying on the bench with nothing attached and did a 10 sec exposure and got a white frame with densely packed stripes in various shades of grey 😳 A dark frame after that looked more reassuring thankfully!

Mark

Yes it's got some hot and warm pixels and a couple of deadish colunms but all looks good to my uneducated eye. Below is a single stretched 300s dark, and also a 400% crop showing some ray strikes which I find really interesting. I'm using APT to control camera and filterwheel btw. 

I'm now agonising over which processing software to go for, there's so many... I think it is a toss up between Astroart and Astro Pixel Processor.  Have downloaded AstroimageJ for photometry and that looks like a very steep learning curve.

Edited February 10, 2021 by CraigT82

[GTom]

Do you still use the camera? Have you measured the power consumption with large delta (40+°C)?

[Adam J]

On 09/02/2021 at 19:33, Sp@ce_d said:

With my QSI683 (same sensor) I found dithering made more difference than using darks TBH. I use both so not saying don't do darks but I can get away with it (on the QSI) as dithering had a more notable improvement.

yeah but remembering you need at least 24 exposures for dithering to be able to properly reject hot pixels. 

[carastro]

Agree with Adam about needing longer Flats due to shutter shadow.  You just have to dim the light to compensate. 

Carole