CONNECTIONS
The camera’s bottom panel houses a range of connections: a 12V input; 12V auxiliary output for external devices; USB 2.0B connection; and a USB hub connector for controlling additional devices, such as a guide camera. Surprisingly, the functions of these ports are not labelled.
600-second dark frames and just a few hot pixels were visible. We used these dark frames to remove thermal noise from the images captured by the camera.
We populated the filter wheel with a set of LRGB filters and placed a hydrogen-alpha (Ha) filter in the fifth slot, with a view to blending some Ha data into the red data collected from some emission nebulae. Inserting the filters was a little fiddly, but once installed they were well protected and firmly held in place. Unfortunately, appalling weather during the November review period thwarted our imaging plans but we captured Ha data on the rare occasions that we had a clearish sky. The camera performed excellently, producing a field of view 1° and 24 arcminutes wide and 1° and 7 arcminutes deep when used in conjunction with a 4-inch refractor reduced to a focal length of 509mm. This gave us an ample field to capture the lovely Eastern Veil in Cygnus (NGC 6992) using 10-minute exposures.
The Atik One 6.0 performed faultlessly during the review period, producing low noise images and capturing plenty of detail. This camera will appeal to many imagers, but especially relative beginners because it is an ‘integrated’ solution that avoids some of the spacing issues that occur when using focal reducers and similar accessories. As the sensor is larger than many ‘starter’ CCDs, it should also suit intermediate imagers who have cut their teeth on a small CCD sensor.