The Saint Michel Astronomy Society wrote to us again last week, to update us on their ongoing tests with the DMK 41AU02.AS astronomy camera. In their latest report, David Laine, told us about his work on constructing a mosaic image of the Moon. His detailed post contains information on the techniques and hardware, which he used to capture and assemble the images.

First of all, below is an example of one of the images, which he captured with a DMK 41AU02.AS astronomy camera, 6.3 reducer and a Barlow:

And the resulting mosaic image (click for original):

Accompanying his images, David wrote:

Out in the field, the handling of the cameras is pretty easy: All you have to do is connect the USB 2.0 cable, and attach the cameras to the telescope’s eyepiece. I am by no means a specialist, when it comes to astro-imaging with a webcam, but I was able to save my first AVI in less than 5 minutes. I use the shipped software - IC Capture.AS - to change only the gain and exposure values. This was all I had to do to get a good image of the Moon.

If you can read French, take a look David’s article, which he posted in the society’s blog.

Thank you David for your contribution to The Imaging Source astronomy cameras community.

Based in Cologne in Germany, Oliver Pettenpaul has submitted a number of very beautiful images on the Moon, which he captured last February. He used a DMK 21AF04.AS astronomy camera, manufactured by The Imaging Source.

Click on the following images to see the original full-sized version and a description of how the image was taken (telescope, settings etc).

Deslandres, Hell, Lexell, Ball Craters:

Alphonsus, Arzachel, Ptolemaeus, Davy and Alpetragius Craters:

Rima Hadley (northern Montes Apenninus):

We congratulate Oliver on these images and look forward to receiving more of his work in the future.

Prism7 is a piece of software, which allows amateur astronomers to capture and analyze images from an array of cameras, now including all astronomy cameras, manufactured by The Imaging Source.

The key features of the software are as follows:

• Online help and a free hotline.
• Affordable price.
• Deep sky atlas.
• Cartography.
• Control of CCD cameras, webcams, SLR cameras and scanners.
• Pre-processing, post-processing and analysis of image data.
• Control of telescope and mounts etc.
• Scripting language that allows developers to make their own applications.

Below is a screenshot, illustrating the main interface (click to enlarge):

If you would like to know more about Prism7, please contact our French reseller Galileo. They have offices in France, Belgium and Switzerland. Similarly, the official web site, contains much detailed information.

Steve Bryson is an amateur astro-photographer, who is based in Marin, California. He purchased a DMK 21AF04 astronomy cameras several years ago.

As with many other astronomers, Steve quickly discovered that his camera was ideal for capturing images of the night sky. He recently submitted some of the images he captured with the camera.

Below, for example, is an image of Saturn, which he captured in 2006:

To capture the image, he used Astro IIDC on his MAC and performed post-processing with Lynkeos, Keith’s Image Stacker, Astrostack and Photoshop.

His telescope is a Meade 12.5″ Starfinder with a Dob Driver II for guiding.

If you would like to see more of Steve’s work, please take a look at his web site.

Last year, we blogged quite a bit about Shevill Mathers. He is based in Tasmania’s capital city, Hobart at the privately owned Southern Cross Observatory. Since then, we have not heard much from him! All the happier we were to receive an e-mail from him last week, announcing some of his current work:

Once again we (visiting astronomer, Robert Lucas, Sydney University) set up everything in the SCO (Southern Cross Observatory) in an attempt to photograph the planet Venus as is emerged from behind the sun. Ingess was late afternoon on the 8th June, with the sun too low down in the hazy sky for us to capture.

On the 10th, total cloud cover persisted throughout the day until 4.30, when the skies cleared as the sun set behind the Meehan Range.

The same problems arose when we attempted the occultation of Jupiter last Dec 23rd 2007.

Shevill is an avid user of The Imaging Source astronomy cameras, as is beautifully illustrated in the following images of his telescopes:

His work was reported about in the The Mercury (Hobart).

Shevill, it is good to hear from you again! And keep up the good work!