Sky and Telescope - May 2015 - 73

ambient temperature images were surprisingly smooth
and lacked the typical "static" appearance of other
uncalibrated CCD images. I suspect some imagers could
dispense with dark calibration altogether and remove
any remaining hot pixels using outlier pixel-rejection
algorithms when stacking images.

A Welcome Surprise
While using the Atik One, I got to thinking about the
close proximity of the detector to the front of the camera.
Even with the camera's internal ﬁlter wheel, the focus
point is only 27 mm from the front ﬂange, according to
the camera specs. I wondered if this would allow the use
of a third-party Nikon lens adapter with the Atik One.
With the oﬀ-axis guider attached to the camera housing,
the back focus is 47 mm, which put it beyond the point
of reaching focus with the third-party Nikon lens adapter
I had on hand.
But once I removed the oﬀ-axis guider and replaced it
with the original T-thread adapter plate, not only would
my Nikon lenses reach focus, but the focus setting was
very near its "inﬁnity" position, meaning the lens was
very close to its optimal spacing. Oﬀering an optional
camera lens adapter would be a natural accessory for the
Atik One.
With the addition of my Nikon adapter, I used the
Atik One on several nights with a Nikon 300mm f/2.8
lens mounted piggyback on my telescope, which produced a generous 143-by-155 arc minute ﬁeld. The camera's small 4.54-micron pixels make it ideal for use with
short-focus telescopes and camera lenses. The camera's
tripod sockets can be used to mount the camera when
imaging with short, wide-angle lenses.

surmount. The accurate guiding provided by the oﬀ-axis
guider and GP camera combination help insure that a
night of imaging will produce a ﬁne set of well-guided
images ready for processing. ✦
North Carolina newspaper photographer Johnny Horne has
reviewed products for Sky & Telescope since 1987.
Without the oﬀ-axis
guider attached, the
Atik One is able to
accommodate the
use of Nikon camera
lenses with the appropriate lens adapter,
making extremely
wide-angle imaging
easy. The image of
M31 seen below was
captured through a
Nikon 300mm f/2.8
ED lens stopped
down to f/4.

Processing with Dawn
An image-processing software program is also supplied with the Atik One Integrated Kit. Dawn works by
dragging up to six icons representing image processing
workﬂow steps into a work area. Images to be processed
are then loaded into a series of folders, and the processed
image appears in an output folder.
Though still under development, Dawn is capable of
performing some calibration and other processing routines, but it falls short of the automated features in more
conventional image-processing programs. For instance,
the program can assemble a color image from red-,
green-, and blue-ﬁltered images but cannot assemble a
color image with additional luminance data, commonly
referred to as an LRGB image.
The Atik One Integrated Kit is a solid competitor for
budding astrophotographers looking to upgrade to a
low-noise, monochrome CCD detector. Its internal ﬁ lter
wheel and intuitive control software make it easy to use,
and it provides automated, temperature-regulated imaging of deep-sky objects with only minimal hurdles to
Sk yandTelescope.com May 2015

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Sky and Telescope - May 2015

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