Hand delivered by those good folks at FLO, my new Atik One + OAG + GP arrived on Wednesday 2nd April!
The Atik One bundle comes with the camera, off-axis guider and their new GP camera. First impressions are very good! It is a beautifully engineered piece of hardware, the sexy anodized red body with the machined faces looks striking and the black CCD housing contrasts nicely with the red.
The guys at Atik have done a great job in thinking about user needs and have included a pass-through power socket, and an integrated USB hub. It’s only a one port hub, but it’s still a welcome addition in the fight against snaking cables everywhere!
Installation of the drivers is a breeze, as is usual with the Atik software. The ASCOM drivers require .Net 3.5 so you may have to install this separately. Windows 7 users will need to enable this in ‘Turn Windows On/Off’ section of the Control Panel.
Another useful idea Atik had is the inclusion of a simple tool to aid in the inserting of the filters. No more taking the thing apart for me! A simple tool that has a felt pad on one end makes inserting the filters a snap. Simply drop the filter into the body aperture and use the felt pad to grip the filter and screw the filter into position. Easy!!
The GP camera is a joy to behold. Compact and lightweight, it compliments the One and the OAG wonderfully. This is a two-trick pony as well, being both a guider and a high frame rate planetary camera (hence GP). I have been wanting to get back into lunar imaging for a while and this will be great for doing just that.
OK, time for some pictures… These were taken at the SGL9 star party – hence the tents in the background. You’ll see I have decided to run the focuser from the camera USB hub and run the guider from a 2nd USB cable. This still cuts down the cables from 5 to 3 which is great!
All things being well, first light should be tonight (8th April) so I’ll report back after that, but am very excited about the potential for this camera!
