In their Grand concours 100ème numéro competition, the French magazine Astronomie Magazine is giving away three The Imaging Source astronomy cameras. All together, the magazine has more than one hundred prizes - worth a whopping EUR 13,000 or USD 20,500 - to be claimed!

The astronomy cameras from The Imaging Source are being offered as the third, forth and fifth prizes:

• 3rd prize: color camera DBK 41AU02.AS, without an IR cut filter, Bayer model, worth EUR 880.00 or USD 1,386.00.

• 4th prize: color camera DFK 41AU02.AS, with an IR cut filter, worth EUR 880.00 or USD 1,386.00.

• 5th prize: monochrome camera DMK 41AU02.AS, without an IR cut filter, worth EUR 880.00 or USD 1,386.00.

If you happen to live in France, or are traveling in France, go round to a local news stand and buy the hundredth issue of Astronomie Magazine.

Do not forget, in addition to the three prizes from The Imaging source, there are 97 more to win!

Bonne chance! Good luck!

Bernhard Christ has sent in an image of the recent lunar eclipse, which he captured with his DMK 31AF03.AS. He comments that despite thick flog in Rüsselsheim (Germany), where he is based, he was able to capture this remarkable image (click for the original):

Thank you, Bernhard, for sharing this image with The Imaging Source astronomy cameras community.

Following his first light image of the Moon, André Débackère has again sent in more of his work. This time, it is a series of monochrome images that have been combined into one RGB image. The images of Saturn were captured with his DMK 21AU04.AS astronomy camera on March 13, 2008.

In his e-mail to us, André discusses the technical details of the image (translated from French):

30 fps, 1/30s. Each AVI, 4 minutes. HUFFYUV codec. Post acquisition processing in RegiStax. Quality 90%, wavelet level 1. Image orientation and RGB in Iris.

A big thank you from all at The Imaging Source go out to André. We appreciate your enthusiasm for our astronomy cameras and for sharing your work with the community.

Mike Salway wrote to us to announce that he has just published a very detailed article about RGB planetary imaging using monochrome cameras.

The article covers the reasons for choosing a monochrome camera, the hardware and software amateurs astronomers need for monochrome RGB imaging, and most importantly, how to recombine monochrome images back into a color image.

Furthermore, there is a tutorial for LRGB combinations, tips for focusing and more.

The following image is part of his article:

Mike’s text commences with:

Planetary Imaging is a fast growing field of astrophotography – boosted by tech-savvy amateur astronomers, larger and cheaper (but good quality) telescopes becoming more accessible, and the proliferation of low-cost webcams as imaging devices which can capture up to 60 frames per second (fps) without compression. It’s never been easier to try your hand at astrophotography and capture that first image of the moon or a planet.

The aim of this article is to serve as a tutorial for creating an RGB image using a monochrome camera, and/or to help you to decide whether mono RGB imaging is right for you. The article will describe exactly what you need to buy (in both hardware and software) and what you need to consider (in capturing and processing) to start down the road of capturing and creating your first RGB Planetary Image.

The article is aimed at an audience of intermediate level planetary astrophotographers, who most likely have already had some previous experience using a colour camera (like a ToUcam/NexImage or a DBK/DFK camera) to capture and process planetary images and are looking to go to the next step of a monochrome camera, but aren’t sure what’s involved. I’m certain though that a lot of the techniques and tips described in here will be just as useful to beginners and will hopefully reduce the huge learning curve that they’re starting down. Most advanced planetary astrophotographers are already using a monochrome camera and are creating wonderful RGB planetary images, but hopefully there may be something of interest to you in here as well. I welcome all of your feedback and suggestions for future revisions of this article.

You can read the article in its entirety at:

• http://www.iceinspace.com.au/index.php?id=63,468,0,0,1,0

Mike, this is an awesome contribution to the community! Thanks for making such an amazing text!

Mario Weigand, who is based Offenbach am Main, Germany is slowly becoming a regular to this blog. We have published quite a lot of his work in the past months. In the middle of last month, the following image, which he captured with his DMK 31AF03, was published on LPOD - Lunar Photo Of The Day (click for full resolution version) :

Chuck Wood, the moderator of the site, posted the following commentary:

Wonderful! Ross, Maclear and the northwest corner of Mare Tranquillitatis - an area that has not been featured previously in high-res LPOD views. This means that there are new stratigraphic relationships to untangle. Maclear, the 20 km wide crater to the left is a Gambart-type crater with walls that appear to be triangular in cross-section (rather than much steeper on the inside than the outside). These craters have no terraces or central peaks and their flat floors are roughly at the same elevation as the surrounding maria. They are always surrounded by younger maria as shown by the well defined break in slope where their outer rims meet the maria. Are they normal complex craters transformed to this characteristic morphology by lava on their floors and surrounding them, or they basin secondaries - both suggestions have been proposed. Ross (26 km) is more complicated. The roughness associated with its near rim ejecta seems to be under the mare in some places and perhaps on it in others. And there is a hint of a faint ray to the upper right. I think that only thin layers of lava flows cover the ejecta, and the crater is older than at least the youngest lavas that surround it. Ross is a Tycho-like crater with slightly muted terraces and a central peak that is reduced in relief by lava fill. The rille that extends from the rim of Maclear northward (up and slightly to the right on this image) is intriguing. Does the rille cut the crater rim? Perhaps, but it doesn’t cut its floor. To the north the rille fades to near indetectablity but its likely continuation is marked by four or more elongated depressions. I interpret these as collapses in the roof of the underlying lava tube. And just at the top edge of the image is a partial oval ridge - is this a pyroclastic vent? There is a lot going on here, with more to fully understand.

Thanks go out to Mario for the image and Chuck for the commentary!