Atik IIhs Moon Images

I recieved an Atik 2hs (no longer inproduction) about four years ago. It was a great improvement over the ToUcam I used before. But, as time marches on, the Atik was replaced two years later with a DMK41. The Atik 2hs is now the autoguider camera on my deep sky astrophotography rig. Although I don't use the Atik 2hs for lunar work any more, I have decided to leave these images on my website just because I think they are pretty darn good for a small chip camera and the lousy seeing usually present in San Antionio, Texas. The Atik IIhs uses a 640X480 pixel imaging sensor having 7.4 micron pixels instead of the 5.6 micron pixels present in normal webcams. This gives the camera more sensitivity and a field of view about 55% larger than a standard webcam. The added sensitivity allowed me to use a 2X Barlow for lunar photography. I normally couldn't use the Barlow with a less sensitive ToUcam because the seeing is normally so bad. The ToUcam can't take short enough exposures at the Barlow's higher f/ratio to freeze the bad seeing. The Atik camera is sensitive enough that it can freeze the seeing at f/20 with my Celestron 8. The following images were the "first-light" effort with the Atik IIhs and a 2X barlow on my C-8.