BUILD & DESIGN CONNECTIVITY EASE OF USE FEATURES IMAGING QUALITY OVERALL
100 FIRST LIGHT DECEMBER
achieved even at this temperature. It took just two minutes and 16 seconds to reach 25°C below the ambient temperature.
We carried out our imaging tests with the camera attached to our own William Optics FLT98 refractor which, with our 0.8x field flattener, has an effective focal length of 509mm. The camera’s Sony ICX834AQG chip (which has a 15.8mm diagonal) gave us a generous wide field of view 1.5x1°, a good field size for many deep-sky objects.
The summer Milky Way was riding high in the sky during the review period so we captured a series of exposures of the ‘Mexico region’ of the North America Nebula in Cygnus. This object is rich in the hydrogen-alpha portion of the electromagnetic spectrum – it was important to confirm the sensitivity of the sensor to this all-important emission component and we were happy to be rewarded with a detailed and colourful image.
The camera operated faultlessly throughout the review period and we were reminded of how convenient a colour camera can be under fickle UK skies. There is no doubt that a monochrome camera, a filter wheel and a set of filters will give greater flexibility in deep-sky imaging, but these extras bump up the price of a setup considerably.
We would not hesitate to recommend the Atik 4120EX to beginners and DSLR imagers looking to upgrade their camera but not wishing to make the leap to monochrome imaging.