Posts Made By: John Krawczyk

Hi All,

As well as being a great planetary camera, i did buy the ATIK-2HS to image smaller objects that get lost in the FOV of my D70. Since im saving my milk money for a 5" APO, i wanted to keep my budget low and still have a good tool for learning RGB imaging. The ATIK-2HS fit the bill quite nicely as a multitasking camera. Like Damian Peach has stated, the ATIK's exhibit very low noise in their Raw frames. Here is my first DSO with the ATIK. I only had time for 15x90 sec luminance images with the clear IR filter and a set of dark frames. The images were guided (ST-4). I hope to get Ha and color data soon. This image here is cropped and 2x bicubic enlarged. Capture was with K3CCD Tools. All other processing was with Images Plus and Neat Image after enlargement.

Thank for looking.

Hi All,

I got a chance last night to shoot color data. The seeing was not as
good as when i took the B/W image i posted a couple of days ago. In
fact i reshot the luminance layer too on friday night. So all the
layers were shot with the same seeing and transparency conditions.
About 4/5 trans and 3/5 seeing. I've got a decent enough workflow
worked out so that i can get all my LRGB data in as little as two
hours. From my site that is about as long as i can get anyone object
without having to flop the mount back over.

Heres the shooting data.

Scope: Stellarvue SV-102 apo @ f/7.8
Mount: Losmandy G11 -
Guiding: SV80/9d & SBIG ST-4 autoguider
Camera: ATIK-2HS semi-cooled monochrome CCD camera
Filters: Astronomik LRGB type 2
Exposures: L=16x120s R=8x120s G=10x120s B=10x120s
Camera Settings: (In K3CCD) Luminance: amp off, 20% gain, RGB: amp
off, 50% gain. All set on 50% bright, 50% sat & auto WB.

Dark frames and flats were taken. Images were dark subtracted in
Images Plus. Images were flat field divided in Paintshop Pro 8. All
calibrated monochrome images were registerd and Adaptive Add combined
in Images Plus. Initial DDP and log contrast stretch in Images Plus.
Frames then registered and RGB combined in Registar. Luminance frame
add in Paintshop Pro. Red frame curve strectch and reapplied as 2nd
luminance layer in Paintshop. Channel Mix, Color Balance & Levels in
Paintshop. Crop and Jpeg conversion with Paintshop.

Comments welcome

(especially any tips about filter weighting)

Thanks for looking

Hi All

I finally got a decent night. Well not really, but it was good enough to satify my cabin fever.

I used an SV-102 4" apo @ f/35 and an ATIK-2HS b/w ccd camera to take separate LRGB (astronomik Type 2 LRGB filter set) avi's using K3CCD Tools for capture. The luminance avi thru the clear IR block filter was 1/33 sec @5fps, 50% bright, 10% gamma, 50% sat & auto WB on. The color channels were shot the same as the luminance except for the slower 1/25 shutter speed. I processed each set of images with Registax 3. I aligned the processed images with Images Plus and combined the color channels and did all other post processing of the image with Paint Shop Pro and Neat Image.

The image has been resized 200%. This image trumps what i did earlier in the month. The thing i did to get the color balance better was to not change the setting from filter to filter as i was shooting them. Im rather pleased with how the image came out considering the lousy seeing. Seeing was 2/5 and transparency was 3/5. The stars were boiling so bad, I didnt even bother shooting any DSOs.

Thanks for looking.

Hi All,

On the same night and 4 hours after i shot the saturn AVI's i had a go at Jupiter. My scope was shooting @ f/35 with a 2.5x powermate stuffed into a 2x barlow. I used virtually the same settings for the ATIK-2HS camera as i did for Saturn. 1/25 sec for RGB filters, 1/33 sec for clear filter. All were 50% gain, 50% bright, 10% gamma and AutoWB on. All captures were done with K3CCD tools and each color channel processed separately with Registax 3. All color channel images were aligned with Images Plus. RGB combined in Paintshop Pro. Luminance layering in Paintshop Pro (i love what that does to the image!). Color balance and unsharp mask in Paintshop Pro. This images could have been sharper had the seeing not complete broke down and the Moon not so close to it when i took it. I like this image alot as it shows that with good seeing my 4" apo will bring really good results. I resized the image 150%.

Thanks for looking

Hi All

I finally got a decent weekend to do some DSO imaging. I havnt had a good one in more than a month. I chose to image a small planetary nebula, NCG2392, in Gemini to test my optics and camera imaging at f/19.5 with a 2.5x Powermate. Seeing and transparency over the weekend was never better than 3/5. Still, i feel that my scope can handle the magnifications required to image small objects like NGC2392. Its not the Hubble, but I think its not to shabby considering my aperture and camera.

Here are the particulars for image capture

Scope: Stellarvue SV-102 APO @ f/19.5 w/Televue 2.5 Powermate
Camera: ATIK-2HS
Exposures: LRGB 39:15:15:15 (all 3 min subs)
Mount: Losmandy G11
Guiding: ST-4 w/SV-80/9d Guidescope
Filters: IDAS LPS & Astronomik Type 2 LRGB filter set

All images were dark subtracted and Sigma Median combined in Images Plus. Registration and combination of color channels was done with Registar. Luminance layering and all other processing was done with Paint Shop Pro 8.0. Image has been resized 200%, cropped and rotated.

Thanks for looking.

M65 & 66 w/ATIK-2HS & Stellarvue SV102 @ f/4.9 w/0.63 focal reducer on a autoguided Losmandy G11.

LRGB 60:16:16:16

This signal is a little lacking in the color channels. I plan to reshoot the RGB data soon.

Thanks for looking

Hi all

Just a small cluster in Cancer. Its a few degrees below M44 in the sky. Its nothworthy for its age at 4 billion years old and its abundance of stars much like our own sun.

ATIK2hs w/Stellarvue SV102 @ f/4.9 w/0.63 reducer on an unguided Losmandy G-11

LRGB 8:6:6:6

Thanks for looking

Hi,

Yet another clear night. This didnt take too long. Sort of a warmup image while waiting for Leo to clear the trees. Cassiopeia is always in the most light polluted part of the sky for me, so i thought i would test my luck anyway and do a quicky image of M103.

I used a Stellarvue SV102 @ f/4.9 with a Celestron .63x focal reducer, ATIK-2HS b/w camera with Astronomik Type 2 LRGB filters all on an unguided G11 mount. Exposures for LRGB=8:6:6:6 20 sec lum subs and 30 sec RGB subs. Processing with Registar and Paintshop Pro 8.

thanks for looking

(edit - I originally listed a TV .8x reducer as part of my train. It was in fact a Celestron .63x i used)

Hi All

New lunar image using my SV-102, a Celestron .63 reducer and an ATIK2HS camera with a Astronomik type 2 green filter. Stack of 412/1200. Seeing wasnt the greatest last night, but this came out pretty good anyway. It all just barely fit in the frame. I layered the image onto a 800x800 black background in Paintshop to improve the asthetics. This is how it looked im my 13mmT6 nagler before i shot it. The image is full size as shown

Thanks for looking

Hi All,

I managed to capture some pretty good frames to create a nice mosaic of a very pictureque region of an 8 day old Moon on 3/18/05. I used my Sv102 with a 2.5x powermate and a ATIK2HS camera and a green filter. I dont remember all the stack counts, but i do remember using Registax 3 and Paintshop Pro to process all the frames and iMerge to create the mosaic

Thanks for looking

Cheers!