The Imaging Source astronomy cameras ship with the camera control software IC Capture.AS, which is a Windows application. The Imaging Source supports the deployment of astronomy cameras on Windows machines only. However, thanks to our very active community, the cameras can also be used on Linux and Mac OS.

Below is an e-mail, which I received from Chris Bosshard - a happy Mac user:

Dear Imaging Source Team

After switching my computing equipment completely to Mac I found it difficult to get standard Webcams working as they used to under Windows. This problem was solved buying one of your cameras. An additional benefit is the fast firewire connection allowing high frame rates and leaving the USB ports free for other peripherals.

The camera used together with Astro IIDC is fun to use and produces good results out of the box. [Below] are some of the images shot with your camera.

BTW the camera model is the FW, colour with IR filter.

Thanks for this great product.

with best regards
Chris Bosshard

Below are the images he sent us:

For those of you wondering how well The Imaging Source cameras work on Mac computers, here is quite a nice review of the first peak at Mars from Dave, with his new DBK 21AF04.AS in the UK.

It was only the second time I’d used the camera, the first time I’ve imaged Mars and the first time I’ve ever seen Mars through a telescope.

The camera, with Astro IIDC software on my Mac was a joy to use.

Regards
Dave

You can see more shots and comment on Dave’s first images in his blog.

Not wishing to be out-done by Tom Hartline or by compatriot Jean-Luc Dauvergne, Sébastien Aubry of Astropodcast.fr has also submitted a very high resolution mosaic image of the moon that he has shot:

Click on the above image to see the full resolution version, or download the original, uncompressed TIF version (36 MB).

He used The Imaging Source DMK 21AF04.AS to capture the image. It was assembled from 60 images of 60 individual movies, each at 30 fps, using a Skywatcher 120/900 ED and a 2.5x barlow.

The capture time was kept to a reasonable one and a half hours, thanks to the high transfer rate of the DMK 21AF04.AS. The processing, however, during which the mosaic image was assembled, took considerably longer. Acquisition and stacking was performed on a Mac, using AstroIIDC, while processing and assembly was done in Photoshop.

Thanks goes to Sébastien for submitting this image.

Have you taken a high resolution image of the moon? If you have, why not send it to us and we will publish it here in the blog and in the sample images archive.

Astro IIDC is an application for astronomy that has been developed to simplify the process of capturing images from a FireWire camera connected to a Mac.

It has been well tested with The Imaging Source cameras. Amongst others, the manufacturer of Astro IIDC cites the following FireWire cameras as being compatible:

• The Imaging Source DMK 21F04
• The Imaging Source DMM 21F04
• The Imaging Source DMM 21F04-ML

• The Imaging Source DFK 21F04
• The Imaging Source DFM 21F04
• The Imaging Source DFM 21F04-ML

• The Imaging Source DBK 21F04
• The Imaging Source DBM 21F04
• The Imaging Source DBM 21F04-ML

UPDATED August 08, 2007: Since writing this blog post, the manufacturer now supports many more The Imaging Source cameras, including all from the astronomy range. Please see the section System Requirements, Compatibility and Limitations of the manufacturers’ web site for details.

Using the software, you can set gamma, saturation, red gain, brightness, black point and exposure and capture single frames or entire image sequences.

Below are a couple of screenshots of the main application window and the camera settings dialog:

Learn more about Astro IIDC, please take a look at the manufacturer’s web site.

Craterlet for OS X is designed to give Mac users a simple application with which to capture images from DCAM compatible cameras, such as our range of astronomy cameras.

The application allows planetary and lunar images to be streamed to the hard disk in BMP, JPEG, PNG and TIFF formats.

Although still in an early stage of development, the application has been tested with the astronomy camera DMK 31AF03.AS and firewire cameras from other manufacturers.

Below is a screenshot of the Windows version of the software.

Stark Labs, the authors of Craterlet, welcome assistance users can provide in testing. They would be delighted, if beta testers would contact them with bug reports, comments and constructive criticism. Furthermore, there is a Yahoo! Group to offer community support.

Craterlet OS X is freeware and requires OS X 10.4 in order to run.

Learn more about the software and download the pre-release version at:
http://www.stark-labs.com/prerelease.html