We have talked about Sebastian Voltmer before in this blog. He has submitted some very spectacular images, many of which he captured with his DMK 21BF04 FireWire camera.

Sebastian has been fascinated by astronomy and the universe since he was 12. What got him really started was the Jupiter Crash between July 16, 1994 and July 22, 1994 in which two dozen fragments of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet crashed into Jupiter, leaving a crater the size of Earth.

Sebastian has produced several DVDs, which show his work. He recently sent one of them - Mars 2005 - Mars-Aufnahmen von Sebastian Voltmer - to us for review.

The images and videos on the DVD were captured with a DMK 21BF04 FireWire camera.

On the back sleeve of the DVD, Sebastian writes the following (translated from German):

In 2003, Mars came the closest to the Earth than it has been for 56,000 years. In the northern hemisphere of the Earth, however, the planet rose only barely above the horizon. The view of Mars from the Earth was obscured due to a layer of dust. In 2005, Mars was again in opposition, but this time, clearly visible from the Earth - exceeding all expectations. A massive dust storm, larger than Africa, blew over the planet and filled in the canyon system “Vallis Marineris”.

By rotating Mars through 360°, it is possible to seem many of its features: gigantic volcanoes, uplands, craters and canyon systems. These Mars photos include some of the best, which have ever been shot from the Earth.

The DVD itself is a collection of videos of Mars, animations and a number of static photos. All the images are very clearly labeled and accompanied by a trance sound track. There is even one animation in 3D, which can be admired with the included 3D glasses.

To give you a taste of what the DVD contains, take a look at the following screenshots (click for full resolution):

I highly recommend purchasing this DVD from Sebastian. It costs only EUR 14.50 (that’s about USD 22.00 or GBP 11.00 (the cost of 3 pints of beer in London!)) and can be easily ordered on line at:

• http://www.astrophoto.de/weltraum/Bestellung.html

Scroll down to Mars 2005 - 3D-Ani (DVD-Video) and enter 1 into the quantity box to the right. You can enter your payment and shipping details at the bottom of the form. Alternatively, just write to Sebastian at sebastian[AT]voltmer.de and he will help you further.

We thank you, Sebastian, for the DVD!

If any other members of the astronomy cameras community have produced such a DVD, using The Imaging Source cameras, please contact us. We would be delighted to feature it in this blog.

Joe Zawodny wrote to us recently talking about some of the difficulties that members of the astronomy cameras community had been experiencing focusing the DBK 31 series at long focal lengths. He writes:

Saturn is [...] a lot dimmer than either Jupiter of Mars. But then, so are the Saturnian moons. I managed to capture Saturn and 4 of its moons in [the following] image, using a Celestron 11 at f/20 and my DBK 31AF03.AS.

Later in his e-mail, he continues.

Two things I learned in the process. You need to increase the brightness control to bring the noise in the darkest parts of the image above zero counts (use the histogram function). Otherwise, stacking will not allow you to access the information lurking in those regions. In this case it was Enceladus that I was after. The second thing I learned is that the DBK’s noise level is still quite low even at very high gain setting. This image was shot with a gain of 880 and an exposure of 1/11 second (with a UV/IR blocking filter). It is a stack of 1600 of the best frames out of 2800. I used the ROI function in IC Capture to allow me to capture so many RGB24 encoded frames and keep the AVI under 1GB for compatibility with RegiStax. I nice challenge with an equally nice reward.

Below is the photo that he submitted:

Thank you Joe for sharing your wisdom with the rest of the astronomy cameras community!

Richard Galli of Nightpixels fame recently sent us some of his latest Lunar images, which he captured with his DMK 41AF02.AS astronomy camera.

The first image is of the Gassendi crater:

And the second of the Clavius crater:

He captured both images with the same equipment: DMK 41AF02.AS, TSC225 telescope and a 2x Barlow lens. He preformed post processing in Iris, using 700 singular images.

A great thanks goes out to Richard from sending in these high resolution photos!

Last week, Aurélie - over at the French astronomy cameras blog - came across an astronomy forum, which contains a number of images depicting the International Space Station. They were captured by the amateur astronomer Laurent Langelez in Ramicourt, France.

Laurent has given permission to publish the following image, which he captured with his DMK 31AU03.AS, mounted on a Newton 200/1000 telescope. His astronomy camera was set with a gain of 600 and exposure time of 1/1000s. He followed the space station with a pair of 60/415 binoculars and an eye piece, with a cross-hair that he built himself.

The image was taken on February 04, 2008:

Laurent made the following statement about his new DMK 31AU03.AS (translated from French):

The DMK 31AU03.AS is brilliant. As of the middle of December, when I first got the camera, I have re-discovered astronomy!

A big thanks goes out to Laurent for his enthusiasm with The Imaging Source astronomy cameras.

His web site contains a number of really great images. Go and take a look!

In the past year, we have been extremely fortunate to have had our astronomy cameras reviewed by many English, German and French magazines. Indeed, the response from the press has been incredibly positive.

Our astronomy cameras have appeared on hundreds of web sites across the Internet and in multiple magazines and newspapers throughout the world.

We have just launched a new section on the astronomy cameras product web site, which brings together the vast array of magazine clippings, which have been published up until now.

The Astronomy Cameras Press Center offers published detailed technical discussions and test reports of The Imaging Source astronomy cameras.

For your reading pleasure:

• Astronomy Cameras Press Center