Aug 12 2008
The Imaging Source, a multi-national manufacturer of imaging hardware and software for astronomy, is now offering amateur astro-photographers a fantastic chance to win one of their renowned telescope cameras (DMK 21AU04.AS).
The DMK 21AU04.AS monochrome telescope camera has a resolution of 640x480, maximum exposure of up to 60 minutes and can capture up to 60 fps. Other monochrome and color models are available at resolutions of 1024x768 and 1280x960, with and without an IR cut filter. All telescope cameras ship with either a USB 2.0 or FireWire connector and deploy low noise CCD chips from Sony.
In "Sky & Telescope", Sean Walker wrote:
"The Imaging Source [CCD imager] is a well-designed, versatile camera that is a natural progression for planetary astro-photographers looking to upgrade from a consumer webcam. The camera control software IC Capture.AS seems to be a mature program itself, complementing the camera perfectly."
The winner of the competition will also receive a copy of the camera control software "IC Capture.AS", with which all cameras parameters can be set and singular images and sequences written to disk. The resulting uncompressed AVI files can be loaded into RegiStax and similar software for post-acquisition processing.
Getting started is simply a matter of connecting the telescope camera to a PC, installing the shipped software and within minutes amateur astronomers will be capturing images of the night sky.
To be in with a chance of winning, all interested parties have to do is go to the following web site and answer one simple question. But they should hurry as the competition closes on September 03, 2008!
- http://www.AstronomyCamerasCompetition.com