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Author Topic: Some Feedback on New Infinity Software and Atik 460EX  (Read 4282 times)

Cliff Halliwell

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Some Feedback on New Infinity Software and Atik 460EX
« on: December 03, 2017, 07:51:33 pm »
This is a message I posted on the Cloudy Nights CCD Imaging Forum.  Someone suggested I post it here, where the software developers are more likely to see it.

“All I can say on this during true cloudy night is that yesterday evening I downloaded the new software, installed it, and plugged in and powered up my 460EX, and took a bunch of darks (that is frames with the cap on). 
 
Relative to earlier versions of the software (the online manual is dated in 2016, so needs an updating) the changes seem small.  Obviously there is a cooling panel for the 400 series cameras, with the ability to turn on and off the cooling, set the temperature, see the actual temperature, and then set it to warm up at the end of a session (likely to avoid any thermal shock to the chip).  I suspect that for the Horizon there would be gain control somewhere (the 400 series have fixed gain I understand).  There is nothing that changes how stacking occurs that I could see (I understand it be averaging).  I was stacking but not aligning, because I had no stars, so I cannot attest to the speed of stacking.  I also did not see any control for the number of stacks.  They just keep stacking. 
 
Downloads were plenty fast, with the 400 series being USB 2.  I did not time them but the impression I had was that there would be no problems stacking exposures of a few seconds, but that this was not going to be a planetary camera.  CORRECTION: I did time downloads this AM and from the 460EX they are about 6 seconds, timed by steamboats. 
 
The interface is simply great, or greatly simple.  Love it.  One important thing for those of us with modern video and monitors/screens is that the interface and fonts scaled nicely to both a standard monitor and a high pixel pitch screen, such as on a Surface Pro.  In contrast, Starlight Live doesn’t scale well and the text in the user interface was essentially unreadable on the Surface Book screen.
 
All in all, very, very nice software.  I am looking forward to trying it out on real stars with my 460EX.
 
And, as every software developer knows, as soon as you release something the reaction is twofold: (1) great and (2) why don’t you also do.....
 
In in the spirit of the latter, and being of the view that the Infinity software is likely to be a major source of competitive advantage for Atik’s cameras, I offer a few suggestions, with no sense of importance or ease of coding.
 
First would be dark subtraction, although the 400 series are known to not much need darks.  Maybe the Infinity camera could benefit.  No idea about the Horizon. 
 
Second might be flats too.  Then one can better deal with the vignette challenge that is coming as we simultaneously try to make our imaging train faster (focal reduction below F5 or even F4 say) and our imaging chips bigger, especially for video.
 
Third would be a simple stack count limit, so one could ask for a max number of stacks.  If nothing else we can then report how many stacks we made for an image, because we set it.
 
Fourth, possibly, is stacking options.  Here, though, my brain hurts when I read on CN about summing versus averaging with different chips.  Maybe it matters less than we think.  But, if summing enables one to go deeper it would help where actual exposure lengths are field-rotation limited (alt-az mounts) or tracking limited (poorer mounts). 
 
So, my congratulations to the software author(s).”

Steve

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Re: Some Feedback on New Infinity Software and Atik 460EX
« Reply #1 on: December 04, 2017, 03:49:15 pm »
Hello Cliff,

Thank you for the kind comments and sharing your ideas on this forum.  The infinity takes a slightly different approach to hot pixels in that it looks to identify them in the images and repair them so as to not need to use dark frames.  Using Darks and Flats takes us closer to traditional Astro Imaging.  Its a difficult balance to strike, keeping infinity quick and simple or to introduce automated versions of the established techniques.  However we are considering how we might implement flat fielding.
We will have a think about stack count limits.
Regarding averaging and summing.  From a statistical point of view there is no difference.  The question becomes more about dynamic range and speed with different image buffers.  We think we have a good compromise of speed and dynamic range.
cheers
Steve

Cliff Halliwell

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Re: Some Feedback on New Infinity Software and Atik 460EX
« Reply #2 on: December 05, 2017, 10:33:17 am »
Thanks.  Looking forward to giving this a real spin with my 460EX. Anxious to see how sensitive it is on an f5 8” SCT, for quick but deep peaks at faint objects. 

One other thing I did not check was whether the camera is imaging simultaneously with downloading when looping, that is that a first download is underway while a second exposure is being collected, or they are sequential.  If the former the download delays on, say, 10 second exposures add trivial amounts of time to stacks.

Steve

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Re: Some Feedback on New Infinity Software and Atik 460EX
« Reply #3 on: December 05, 2017, 11:00:23 am »
Hello,

The 460 will be exposing then downloading then exposing again.  The slower download speeds of the 4 series do minimise the read noise of the cameras.  However it makes the higher download speeds of the infinity and Horizon more attractive for use with the infinity software. 

You can try binning 2x2 to improve sensitivity and download times.  Or taking longer ~30sec sub exposure to minimise the percentage of time the camera is downloading.
Best
Steve