Nick Howes contacted us recently, submitting the following images. They were captured with a DMK 21AU04.AS astronomy camera. Next week, we will be looking at some more of his work, including a multi-post article, which was originally published in Astronomy Now, a leading astronomy magazine in the UK.

The first image, which he submitted is the Sun in Hydrogen Alpha at F40, focusing on the three recent active regions (click to zoom):

He commentates the image, with:

The Hydrogen Alpha scope I use is a modified Coronado PST has been modified to 80mm aperture, using a combination of Baader Cool ERF filters, various adapters and a William Optics Zenisthstar telescope, this has massively improved both the resolution and the overall performance of the scope, which the only part remaining is the very good 0.7A etalon. I have replaced the 5mm blocking filter with the Coronado BF10.

He also submitted the second image (click to zoom):

Adding the following:

The images making up this composite were all taken on the March 30, 2008 for the high resolution surface, and April 05, 2008 for the prominences, using a DMK 21AU04.AS camera at 60 frames per second, generating over 8GB of data to process. This took most almost a day to just stack/combine and create RAW TIF files, which were then edited and composited using Photoshop CS2 and iMerge.

Furthermore, Nick notes:

With the Sun currently still relatively low in the sky, I hope you can appreciate the complexity and difficulty involved in both acquiring and creating this image.

Nick invites interested readers to contact him for more details. Please post your questions into the comments form below.

A great thanks goes out to Nick for submitting these spectacular photos!

I speak to hundreds of folks from The Imaging Source community each week and am always amazed at the number of new and exciting applications in which our cameras are implemented worldwide.

From astronomy to zoology, many applications are unique and quite fascinating.

Here is a couple stunning pictures taken with a DBK 21AF04.AS by a gentleman from NASA .

You may know that green plants are highly reflective in infrared light. I was playing around with IR-pass and IR-block filters on my DBK 21AF04.AS one day and was struck at just how strong this effect is on one of my plants. I’m attaching an image showing what I’m talking about. I figured you may want a demo of how your DBK color cameras are sensitive to IR light.

Rus Belikov

P.S. The sharp rise in infrared reflectance of green plants is known as the “red edge” and is one of spectral biomarkers in searching for life beyond the solar system.

Below is the image, which Rus submitted:

Thanks Rus! Keeps up the good work.

profjohn

Happy birthday to the Astronomy Cameras Blog!

We started this blog exactly one year ago today with a post about the March 2007 lunar eclipse, captured by Dominique Dierick:

Since then, the astronomy cameras community has gone from strength to strength. We receive more images, which our customers have captured using our astronomy cameras that we can possibly post here in the blog.

All of us at The Imaging Source are very thankful for this fantastic support and deployment of our cameras.

Since the release of the English language, the following French and Simplified Chinese version have also been published. Their aim is to build the community in French and Chinese speaking parts of the world. They are maintained by by colleagues Aurélie Le Fort and Xiao Sun respectively:

• Blog “caméras d’astronomie”

• 天文相机博客

Thanks again go out to all our readers for the great support and interest in The Imaging Source astronomy cameras.

The Italian astronomy magazine Nuovo ORIONE published a detailed test report on the DMK 21AF04.AS and DFK 21AF04.AS in their January 2008 issue.

The cameras were tested on their ability to perform in planetary and deep sky imaging. Furthermore, the article contains a paragraph dedicated to the camera control software IC Capture.AS. This software is shipped with all astronomy cameras, manufactured by The Imaging Source.

The author of the article concludes that The Imaging Source astronomy cameras are much better suited to planetary imaging than traditional web cameras, as their noise is far lower and their resolution far higher.

Turning his attention to deep sky imaging, the author is convinced that the cameras are absolutely suited to capturing relatively faint Messier objects.

If you speak Italian or would just like to take a look at the sample images in the article, please feel free to download the full article - Le videocamere Imaging Source - below.

Simply click on the following screenshot to download:

We send a big thank you to the editors at Nuovo ORIONE for taking the time to test and publish this detailed test report about The Imaging Source astronomy cameras.

Following our recently post about the test report in Coelum ASTRONOMIA, we came across the following clipping in an older issue of the same magazine:

The short article introduces the FireWire cameras to the Italian market, offering an overview of the camera’s technical merits and noting that Centro Ottico San Marco is one of our official resellers in Italy.

The article was originally published in December 2006.

Again, a (some what belated) thank you goes out to Coelum ASTRONOMIA for publishing this news bulletin.