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3.6 Thermal Stabilization and Regulation
Atik cameras are thermally stabilized to allow your CCD to produce the best result that it
can deliver. This is a thermoelectric process and therefore it takes some time to stabilize.
After switching the camera on you should wait about 5 minutes until thermal stabilization is
achieved.
The temperature is regulated, which means you can select a fixed temperature at which
you want the CCD to be maintained. This will allow making calibration frame libraries
(darks, bias) at different temperatures settings, avoiding the need to waste precious
imaging time with them.
One additional bonus is the ability to use liquid cooling. This is especially interesting on very
warm summer nights, where the air system won't allow you to reach the desired
temperature. By using water as a heat transport medium, lower temperatures can be
achieved.
3.7 Optical window heater
Because the CCD can be cooled to well below zero, conditions of very high humidity can
sometimes lead to condensation forming on the outside of the optical window. To
counteract this, the camera is equipped with an internal heater which can gently heat the
window to prevent condensation forming. To avoid unnecessary power consumption, the
heater is turned off by default. To turn it on, you should do the following:
Install the Application “Atik Config”, which is located on the CD Run the
application, press “connect”, followed by “EEPROM” Locate the option “Aux
power”; initially it will be set to 0
Increase the power level to 255
Press “Write to Memory” and exit
Press “Disconnect” and close Atik Config
WARNING: Don't change ANY of the other settings on EEPROM
As a suggestion, first try increasing the power level to 125 to see if this is proficient to
prevent dew from appearing.
