M51 - First Light with ATIK-16HR

I've been asked to write a review of the new ATIK 16HR CCD Camera by A&S. I've had the camera about 2 weeks now but only last night did I get a decent sky to give it a spin.

Is it any good? Judge for yourself.


webtreatz.com/component/option,com_zoom/...geNo,4/key,27/hit,1/


I’m mega pleased with this. This was 4x5mins, NO darks flats or bias used and NO light pollution filter. And only 4 images in there!

Celestron C9.25XLT@f/6.3

ATIK 16HR CCD camera.

4 x 5 min exposures, no darks or bias frames used.

UV/IR block filter only.



I have a whole pile of images of M81 also to process later with darks and flats. Just as a foretaste on the individual images of M81 there are H-Alpha regions visible in the arms.



More later………….

I've been asked to write a review of the new ATIK 16HR CCD Camera by A&S. I've had the camera about 2 weeks now but only last night did I get a decent sky to give it a spin.

Is it any good? Judge for yourself.


webtreatz.com/component/option,com_zoom/...geNo,4/key,27/hit,1/


I’m mega pleased with this. This was 4x5mins, NO darks flats or bias used and NO light pollution filter. And only 4 images in there!

Celestron C9.25XLT@f/6.3

ATIK 16HR CCD camera.

4 x 5 min exposures, no darks or bias frames used.

UV/IR block filter only.



I have a whole pile of images of M81 also to process later with darks and flats. Just as a foretaste on the individual images of M81 there are H-Alpha regions visible in the arms.



More later………….

well done dave,
great amount of detail there, once you get the hang of it i think you'll get some great images with it.
stephen.

where is the noise? hehe

loooks like a great camera

Any chance you could manage to focus even better?

A grand image of the galaxy, but it looks like to me that you have the levels pumped up too high, I can see quite a large amount of graininess there, even when my monitor brightness is down very low.

...must be your monitor Dave...

Dave - for the total integration time, that's a very impressive image.

What CCD does the ATIK use? It must have a pretty high QE and low dark current.

It would be interesting to see the same image with darks/flats and a much longer integration time.

I see some hot pixels and guiding could be tweaked a little to give a superb image. I also see the graininess Dave refers to above but post-processing could probably reduce that.

Cheers

Dave