John Chumack at The Chumack Observatories has posted a series of Venus images, each taken with different Barlow lenses (2x and 4x) into the Bad Astronomy Forum. The series was captured with a DMK FireWire camera and 10″ SCT from his backyard in Dayton, OH, USA.

Click on the following image for the full sized version:

In the forum, John writes:

Venus was only about 20 degrees off the horizon when I took these, so seeing sucked a bit, I really should have waited until it got higher for the higher barlow mags, 4x is a bit much, it did not quite fit in the FOV either.
[..]
Captured 60 sec avi’s, stacked in Registax4, and assembled in Adobe PS.

Thanks go out to John for sharing these images with the community.

Since so many customers call with questions regarding the DBK versus DFK cameras from The Imaging Source, I thought I’d devote an entire article on the differences, as well as, the similarities between the three camera siblings available from The Imaging Source!

Mostly unknown to the general public, the alphanumeric labels of our Astronomy Cameras do have significance. The fact that they are built in Germany governs the first few characters of their names and CCD chip standards provides the rest.

Below I have listed the alphanumeric characters, the German translations, and finally the (English) translation in parentheses if a difference exists. Let us first look at the best seller in the astronomy world, the ever popular DMK 21AF04.AS:

• D = Digital, M = Monochrome, K = Kamera (Camera)

• The “21A” is a series name and nothing else.

• F = FireWire, 04 = 1/4″ CCD Chip, .AS = Astronomy

This should give you an idea of how the names have been “assigned” from their German origins, sort of like the infamous over-engineered automobiles from BMW. Question:

1. What does BMW stands for?

Now, if Farbe means color in German and we sell cameras with 1/3″ and 1/2″ format CCD chips, can you decipher the following camera line?

2. DFK 31AF03.AS

Finally, the most frequently asked question from soon-to-be users of The Imaging Source cameras is:

What is the difference between the color camera and the Bayer color camera?

This term is derived from the name of its inventor, Dr. Bryce E. Bayer of Eastman Kodak, and refers to a particular arrangement of color filters used in most single-chip digital image sensors. Both The Imaging Source color and Bayer cameras use this technique to interpolate the color which leads us to the answer of the FAQ of the year. The primary difference between the two color cameras is:

• the DFK 41AF02.AS cuts out the IR region of the spectrum

• the DBK 41AF02.AS does NOT cut out the IR region of the light spectrum.

Which leads us to the final quiz question, what type of camera is this?

3. DBK 41AF02.AS

Hopefully this blog post will not only shed light on the method for the naming procedures at The Imaging Source, but also, will give you a little insight to why the DBK 21AF04.AS is the color camera preferred by most astrophotographers!

Answers:
1. Die Bayerischen Motoren Werke AG (Bavarian Motor Works)
2. DFK 31AF03.AS = 1/3″ Color Camera with IR Filter
3. DBK 41AF02.AS = 1/2″ Color Camera with no IR Filter

One of the most commonly posed hardware related questions in our support department is:

What is the maximum length of FireWire cable that I can use with your astronomy cameras?

The official answer is:

4.5 meters

For example, the cable CA-1394-66/4.5.

We have heard reports from customers that they have got our cameras working with cables of up to 10 meters. These cables, however, are not officially supported and thus your mileage may vary.

We do, however, offer an officially supported solution, if you have a really long distance between camera and host PC. Typically, this solution is of interest to customers with their telescope and camera in the garden and PC in a warm home office.

Using the Optical FireWire Repeater (OL/1394sc2-1), distances of between 10 meters and 1 kilometer can be bridged. Although, the Optical FireWire Repeater is certainly not a low cost solution, it does allow extremely long cables to be used and can save the day in some extreme situations.

On his web site, Stern-Fan.de, Rolf Geissinger has published a review of the DMK 31AF03.AS FireWire camera. The review is written in German.

We have translated the main text of the review from German into English to make it accessible to our world wide audience.

Copyright information and source is cited at the end of the review.

Rolf Geissinger writes:

Digital Astrophotography With A FireWire Camera
(The Imaging Source DMK 31AF03.AS)

Right after you take this camera out of the box you will immediately notice that it is not some low cost consumer product, but a high quality industrial camera. The camera is very compact and its casing is entirely cast in metal.

The camera is connected to the computer via a IEEE 1394 interface, better known as FireWire. As long as you have a fast host PC, this interface allows data to be transferred at highest possible speed: Up to 30 monochrome images per second at 1024×768. That is a far cry from USB web cameras.

The monochrome CCD is extremely sensitive, so that you can easily work with short exposure times.

The driver installation ran without any problems. The capture software offers a wide range of useful features, but at the same time is easy to use and self-explanatory. The software offers a video mode and a single images mode, both of which can be automated (you can define the number of AVI frames that should be captured, time programming and image sequences).

[In Rolf's text, there are some product photos and specification here.]

Conclusion: This is certainly not a cheap camera, but extremely well suited to its main purpose. The ultimate camera for high resolution Moon, Sun and planet photography.

Source: http://www.stern-fan.de/Seiten/fotografie-firewire.htm

On Friday, we received the following short movie from Dennis Monjon, showing the Moon. It was captured with his DBK 31AF03.AS and a 200 mm zoom lens.

Click the following image to download the movie:

Thanks go to Dennis for sending in this movie.