ALPY off axis guider

[Mr Nicholas John Atkinson]

Guys,

My setup is the Alpy with off axis guider and calibration unit, H9 CCD camera and ATIK Titan. on the work bench I set spectroscope up and obtained a solar spectrum and image of the slit with the CCD camera. However, once attached to my TAK 85 the solar spectrum was clear and in focus but the there was no response on the ATIK Titan. MAXim DL 6 is used with the Titan but because ATIK does not have a driver installed in Maxim one has to use an ASCOM driver.

Has anyone any idea why I am having these problems?

[Andy Wilson]

Hi Nick,

I think you mean the ALPY guide module rather than a separate off axis guider. Though that doesn’t really matter for this discussion.

I assume that you are using the ATIK Titan for guiding. When you say no response, does it take an image which is blank, or can you not even get it to take any image with the Titan? I take it you are pointing your setup at the blank daytime sky for the solar spectrum. Note it should not be pointed at the Sun for a solar spectrum as the reflected light from the sky is easily bright enough. Pointing directly at the Sun would probably fry the guide camera and might do some other damage.

Otherwise you could try other software rather than MaxIm DL for guiding. Though I use MaxIm DL to acquire my spectrum images, I switched to the free PHD2 for guiding as I found it far superior.

http://openphdguiding.org/

Best wishes,

Andy

[Paul Luckas]

Hi Nick,

As you’ve probably noticed, Atik have removed the MaxIM drivers from their installer and recommend using an ASCOM driver instead.

However, you might try to get the Titan working using the original MaxIM plugin (https://www.atik-cameras.com/downloads/). You need to manually download the files and copy them into the MaxIM folder as documented. 

Try setting it up as camera 1 (ie, pretend you only have one camera – the Atik Titan). If that works, then it should also connect as camera 2 (the guide camera in MaxIM).

Paul

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