First Colour Pictures with the Atik Infinity

By Jo on August 21st, 2015

We’ve managed to sneak between the English summer clouds to test the colour model of our new Atik Infinity camera. So, without further ado, here are some of the results.

New pictures, new features

Aside from exploring the night sky live in colour, there are also a number of exciting developments taking place on the software side of things. Alongside the continuous live-stacking and intelligent histogram features we’ve already mentioned, we’ve also been working on integrating a number of broadcasting features.

These will allow you to stream live to YouTube directly from within the software itself, meaning you have a global audience for your Infinity astronomy sessions at the press of a button (or a few buttons, we’re waiting on the official count.) Sound recording can also be streamed meaning you can talk directly to your audience, and use of YouTube’s live chat feature means they can chat back.

A list of available broadcasts will be available in the software so you can find out who’s broadcasting at any time, and we’re including features that allow you to replay and broadcast your previous sessions. This means you can still share the wonders of your night sky whatever the weather, whatever the time. Of course broadcasting isn’t a must, and instead you can use this replay feature to share your sessions with family and friends.

Other features include focus assist and monitoring tools, and the ability to save to FITs, PNG and JPG formats. We’re keeping the interface as simple and intuitive as possible whilst still providing you with complete control.

Where did it start?

We thought you might also like to know a little more about how the camera came about. While conventional approaches to video astronomy include adapting security cameras and using guide cameras, these approaches have their limitations. Instead, the Infinity is based on a fully-fledged, high-end 16bit camera that we initially developed for use by our OEM customers in microscopy and inspection applications. These cameras are both fast and sensitive, two of the primary qualities needed in video astronomy. We couldn’t resist taking this design and re-engineering it to create a dedicated VA camera, now known as the Atik Infinity.