Atik Infinity Photos (January 14, 2018)

Introduction | Photos | References

On this page I present photos taken with the Atik Infinity camera on January 14, 2018.

 

Introduction

The following photos were my sixth attempt with the Atik Infinity camera.

The Sky-Watcher Skymax-127 has a focal length of 1500 mm, which is too long for the Atik Infinity camera. That is why I used it with a TS focal length reducer and extension tube. This has the advantage that aperure ratio increases and thus, shorter exposure times are possible. In practice, I got a reduction factor of 2.3, which 1 resulted in an aperture ratio of f/5.1.

Details

On January 14.1, 2018 there was finally another clear night, and so I finally managed to try out the Atik Infinity on my Skymax-127. I did, however, not succeed in aligning the mount properly, and so the GoTo control did not find the asked-for targets. Frustrated, I finally gave up and decided to try two objects that are relatively easy to find manually (although I would have had to restart the control and align the tube horizontally, which I forgot to do...). The Pleiades M 45 were my first observation target, and I found it after slight corrections. The Andromeda Nebula M 31, was my second target, and it did not work at the beginning. But with a bit of "poking around" and luck I found it at last. These objects proved to be so extended that I had to use my recently purchased focal reducer and extension tube (I still have to measure the exact degree of reduction...). The focus of the photos was not optimal by the way. To my pleasure, I was later able to prove that I had indeed found the objects that I was looking for by comparing my photos with drawings in Stoyan's book Deep Sky Reiseführer. Unfortunately, photos were not very helpful in these cases (maybe, photos on the Internet are more useful...).

 

Photos

Here is an example of each object that I took with the Skymax-127 and 2 x TS focal reducer plus25 mm extension tube (results theoretically in about 3 x reduction, practically in about 2,31 x reduction) on the Star Discovery AZ GoTo mount:

    

M 45 (Taurus), center, unprocessed

  

M 45 (Taurus), center, post-processed

 

M 31 and M 32 (top left, Andromeda), unprocessed

  

M 31 and M 32 (top left, Andromeda), post-processed

The following photos were created later from recordings:

    

M 45 (Taurus), center, from recording, unprocessed

  

M 45 (Taurus), center, from recording, processed
 

M 31 and M 32 (top left, Andromeda), from recording, processed

  

M 31 and M 32 (top left, Andromeda), from recording, processed, darker variant

 

This more "aggressive" variant was started with auto-contrast and then changed slightly in the darks to make the background darker. As a result, the core is more washed out, but the fine structures are better to recognize, if one looks at the large version.

I found a similar version on astrojedi's blog, so I tried again and processed more "aggresively" to get closer to its result.

M 31 and M 32 (top left, Andromeda), from recording, processed, more "aggressive" variant
 

M 31 and M 32 (top left, Andromeda), from further recording, processed

  

M 31 and M 32 (top left, Andromeda), from yet another recording, processed

These photos show the complete field of view, and the large versions are in original size. This is due to the fact that the sky objects are extended - even beyond the field of view.

 

References

On this Site