User Manual Instruction Manual

5 Planetary (high-speed) Imaging
The Atik Titan can take up to 15 frames per second and store them in uncom-
pressed 16-bit format on a standard hard disk drive. In order to do high-speed
imaging using Capture, the following steps must be taken:-
● check the Pre checkbox in the Exposure dialog – this enables the fast
download mode;
● set a suitable exposure time in the Exposure dialog – note that high
frame rates require short exposure times;
● check the Autosave Images checkbox in the Exposure dialog;
● enter a suitable folder and file name prefix in the text box below the
Autosave Images checkbox (or use the browse button alongside it);
● select a suitable suffix scheme from the Seq fmt. drop-down list;
● enter your desired starting sequence number in the Seq No. text box;
● start imaging by selecting the Camera | Loop menu option or else by
clicking on the Loop toolbar item;
● stop imaging by deselecting the Camera | Loop menu option or else
by clicking on the Loop toolbar item again.
Please ensure that your hard disk drive has enough space available for
your proposed observing run – in high-speed imaging mode the Titan
eats up disk space very quickly! Performance will be improved by
minimizing the number of other processes running on the system. If the frame
rate is reduced by hard disk performance limitations, you might be able to
improve it by using a RAM disk, such as the one provided by Dataram (see
http://memory.dataram.com/products-and-services/software/ramdisk/download-ramdisk).
A major advantage of operating in high-speed imaging mode is that it allows
you to capture moments of steady seeing, which can then be selected and
stacked to produce far sharper images than could be achieved with longer
exposure times. Registax is a freeware program which is designed to make
this post-processing as easy as possible: please refer to the Registax website
(http://www.astrono mie.be/registax/index.html ) for further details.
Registax will process and stack RGB
images taken through different colour
filters provided that the files are saved
with the suffixes _R, _G and _B, to
indicate the colour channel. The
easiest way to achieve this is by setting
up an observing sequence as shown
on the right.
Registax can also debayerize images
taken with one-shot colour cameras.