As ProfJohn announced in his recent blog post, The Imaging Source astronomy cameras have appeared in a very complimentary review, published in the October 2007 issue of Sky and Telescope magazine.

Sean Walker took the astronomy camera DMK 21AF04.AS and the camera control software IC Capture.AS through their paces and has written a very detailed text on his research.

In this blog post, I would like to build on ProfJohn’s recent entry, quoting some more from Sean’s review.

Sean talks in detail about IC Capture.AS:

One key to the excellent performance of the DMK 21AF04.AS is the control software, IC Capture.AS, included with the camera. This program is well designed and intuitive. [...]

Everything you need to record a high-quality video stream is directly at hand when you launch the program. Controls for exposure time, gain (sensitivity), and frame rate are clearly labeled and conveniently located on the toolbar across the top of the computer screen. [...]

One excellent feature of IC Capture.AS is its ability to crop the image frame with the ROI (Region of Interest) tab and thus avoid recording massive areas of black space around the planets.

We fully agree with the points that Sean raises. Only with a piece of stable, highly usable and mature software is it possible to acquire sequences of data that can be processed in to good looking images. We have spent many man hours developing IC Capture.AS to address the needs of amateur astronomers.

In the latter part of his review, Sean turns his attention to the cameras its self:

[...] the DMK camera performed like a champ. Its Sony CCD chip is sensitive from ultraviolet to near-infrared wavelengths, with a peak response at roughly 510 nanometers in the green. This wide spectral range is excellent for imaging planets. [...]

After several weeks with the DMK camera, I feel that it offers the best performance-to-price ratio available today for planetary imagers. It produces images almost as good as those from cameras costing more than twice the price.

Here at The Imaging Source, we are very happy with Sean’s review and would like to thank him for taking the time to write and have published such a detailed text. As ProfJohn mentioned in his blog post, we wholeheartedly recommend that you go to your local newsstand and buy the current issue of Sky and Telescope. The cover to look for is the on at the top right of this blog post

We have just received the following animation from Hold Siegfried of St. Marein in Austria.

It was captured with The Imaging Source DMK 31AF03.AS astronomy camera and Schiefspiegler 300/6000 telescope with an Astronomik green filter. 12 films were captured, each one with 1500 frames. The resulting data was processed with Registax.

The images were captured on August 27, 2007 between 08.23 and 09:03 UT.

You thanks go to Hold Siegfried for this impressive little animation.

In the October edition of Sky and Telescope, now being delivered to customers and newsstands worldwide, Sean Walker puts The Imaging Source’s best selling astronomy camera through the paces in the S&T Test Report: A New Planetary Camera.

Starting on page 36, Sean writes in the Bottom-line Summary:

The Imaging Source DMK 21AF04.AS is a well designed, versatile camera that is a natural progression for planetary astrophotographers looking to upgrade from their consumer webcams.

The camera-control software IC Capture.AS seems to be a mature program itself, complementing the camera perfectly.

Both the DMK 21AF04.AS and the IC Capture.AS software scores 4.5 Stars out of five with an overall score of 4.5 Stars. The one misprint in the article regarding the telescope adapter (or nosepiece) is that this part is included in all astronomy cameras shipped from The Imaging Source!

We at The Imaging Source could not be more proud of the rating for our DMK 21AF04.AS! Get your S&T issue today to read the review in its entirety.

I have just been in contact with Shevill Mathers, who was masterminding the filming of the total lunar eclipse for the Discovery Science Channel TV from his Southern Cross Observatory, Cambridge, Tasmania, Australia.

He writes that the night was a great success after a very windy and cloudy start. Once the Moon rose above the cloud layer it remained clear for most of the event.

A report back from Discovery Science Channel TV indicated 27,000 viewers were online around the world. It was just magic to watch the Moon occult stars in its journey across the sky and to see them so close to the Moon, something only seen during a total eclipse.

The documentary film maker and Discovery Science Channel TV are pretty happy and relieved it is all over and worth all the effort.

A great thanks goes to Shevill for his work with The Imaging Source astronomy cameras in this project.

Below is a high resolution image of the eclipse and a screenshot of the Discovery Science Channel TV web site that streamed the entire event.

We are delighted to announce that we have just published the Spanish version of the Astronomy Cameras web site (click on the image to go to new web site):

Please feel free to contact us in Spanish or indeed, any other languages that is available on the web site.