Shevill Mathers contacted me today, with the following newspaper cutting. It appeared in today’s The Mercury (Hobart).

In this e-mail to me, Shevill notes:

We cannot find any reference to this being done before, and the experts in planetary occultations are watching with interest.

Shevill will of course be using his astronomy cameras from The Imaging Source (as can be clearly seen in the above photo).

Here at The Imaging Source, we wish him a lot of luck and of course good seeing.

We would be delighted to receive the resulting images, captured with The Imaging Source astronomy cameras.

The Imaging Source astronomy cameras have just appeared in the BBC Sky at Night e-mail newsletter. Again, in association with this renowned and much celebrated magazine, we are offering you the opportunity to win one of our most popular astronomy cameras - DMK 21AF04.AS.

The competition closes on January 03, 2008, so hurry and enter today!

All of us at The Imaging Source in the US, Germany and Taiwan wish you a very happy and healthy holiday season. We are extremely grateful for your continuing support and participation in the ever growing astronomy cameras community.

The astronomy cameras sales and support departments at The Imaging Source Headquarters in Germany will be closed on the following days next week:

• Monday, December 24, 2007 (Heiligabend)
• Tuesday, December 25, 2007 (1. Weihnachtstag)
• Wednesday, December 26, 2007 (2. Weihnachtstag)

And on the following days, there will be partial service:

• Thursday, December 27, 2007
• Friday, December 28, 2007

In the week following, the astronomy cameras sales and support departments at The Imaging Source Headquarters in Germany will be closed on the following days:

• Monday, December 31, 2007 (Silvester)
• Tuesday, January 01, 2008 (Neujahr)

After that, it is business as usual again! If you have a sales or support query within the above time frame, please be patient. We will get back to you as soon as we can!

Image source: http://www.freefoto.com/preview/90-03-2?ffid=90-03-2

mécASTROnic, one our French resellers, has recently published a short announcement and review of the new USB 2.0 astronomy cameras. The text has been translated from French into English for our global audience.

The CCD cameras from The Imaging Source are now available with USB 2.0 connectors. These new cameras are in addition to their current range of FireWire cameras. These cameras perform very well and are known in the amateur astronomy community for their great image quality (especially for planetary imaging). They are also well suited for deep sky imaging despite their 8 bit digitization and lack of cooling. The cameras ship with monochrome and color CCDs from Sony and resolutions of 640×480, 1024×768 and 1280×960. Without an IR cut filter, the cameras are highly sensitive to light throughout the spectrum. They output up to 60 non-compressed frames per second and can be exposed for up to sixty minutes. The cameras ship with camera control and acquisition software, a USB cable and telescope adapter (31.75 mm).

For our French-speaking customers, the mécASTROnic web site offers a great deal of detailed information about The Imaging Source astronomy cameras.

Mario Weigand of SkyTrip.de fame has been very busy with his range of The Imaging Source astronomy cameras. He has published a number of image series that he has captured in the past three weeks. Detailed below are two of the most spectacular. The images were captured in Offenbach am Main, Germany, using DMK 31AF03 and DMK 21BF04 respectively:

Theophilus Crater, captured on November 28, 2007

Mars (Tharsis and Solis Lacus), captured on November 28, 2007

The original page, with additional images and German text is also available.