During the past few weeks, we have been in contact with Shevill Mathers from Southern Cross Observatory, Cambridge, Tasmania, Australia.

Together with Discovery Science Channel TV, Shevill is filming the total lunar eclipse that will be happening tomorrow, August 28, 2007. It will be visible in its entirety for all of Eastern Australia and New Zealand.

The Imaging Source is sponsoring the project with one DFK 41AF02.AS. Using this astronomy camera, Discovery Science Channel TV will be broadcasting the event live over traditional channels and on their web site:

http://www.discoverychannel.com.au/eclipse/

In order to test his equipment, Shevill carried out a dress rehearsal last night. He was kind enough to send us some photos of the test set-up.

Be sure to tune in to see the total lunar eclipse in all its glory tomorrow evening.

One of our reseller in France, Galileo has published an interesting introduction to The Imaging Source astronomy cameras, including a good number of sample images.

(The text is in French.)

Mick Hyde from Swindon in the United Kingdom has posted the following lunar image on LPOD.

Chuck Wood, the editor of LPOD, writes:

I like this image because its so much like what I observe with a moderate power view of the Moon. There is the main object of interest - Aristarchus and its plateau - and then hundreds of kilometers of other things to notice. The image captures the feeling of the Moon’s curvature, with the mare bending away to Eddington near the limb.

A sequence of images was captured with the DMK 21AF04.AS astronomy camera and assembled using RegiStax to produce the above mosaic.

A big thanks go to Mick for his work with The Imaging Source astronomy cameras.

I have just received an e-mail from Jérôme Grenier in France. He wrote to me to tell me about some images that of the Moon he has shot using DMK 31AF03:

Je pratique l’astronomie avec une caméra DMK 31AF03 et j’apprécie beaucoup leur rapport qualité prix.

Translation: I do astronomy with the DMK 31AF03 and I appreciate its good price/performance ratio.

Jérôme goes on to mention that his web site contains a number of images that he has captured with the aforementioned camera. Below is one of them:

Great thanks go to Jérôme for sharing his work with the astronomy cameras community.

The Imaging Source and the BBC magazine Sky at Night have teamed up to bring you a competition in which you can win one of three DMK astronomy cameras.

The competition was published in the September 2007 issue of the magazine - on newsstands throughout the UK, Continental Europe, USA and Australia as of August 21, 2007.

The main prize is one DMK 41AF02.AS monochrome camera with a resolution of 1280×960, 15 frames per second and an exposure time of up to 60 minutes.

The runner-up prizes are two DMK 21AF04.AS monochrome cameras with a resolution of 640×480, 60 frames per second and an exposure time of up to 60 minutes.

All cameras deploy extremely low noise CCDs from Sony®.

To be in with a chance of winning, simply read Sky at Night and answer the following question:

What is the maximum exposure time of the DMK 41AF02.AS monochrome camera?

Take a look at the product overview page to find out the answer and enter here.

Good luck