Current mood:

accomplished

First Results
Testing the Doctor's new Firewire Camera

Late last week I decided to buy the DMK 21AF04.AS, a new high speed monochrome planetary camera. The DMK promised to be several times more sensitive than my venerable TouCam Pro II, has much lower electronic noise plus far more versatile in terms of research. But it was to be a pricey beast. Even with Shemp's (a local telescope dealer) cost breaks - it wasn't cheap - $420 for the DMK + power supply and attachments, and another ~ 200 dollars for the expensive dichroic filters needed for color (RGB) and imaging in selected wavelengths.

The weekend basically sucked for imaging - the skies often proved to be much too turbulent and hazy. But Tuesday night things were looking good, so i set up for a side-by-side comparison of both the 'old' and 'new' cameras. As an added bonus, the satellite Io + shadow were in transit, the Great Red Spot was rotating into view, plus the large satellite Ganymede was nearby.

OK - let's see these SHINYs!

(cut for borkage)



Jupiter - June 26th at 1127 PM

(or 6/27/07 0327 UT):





This is one of the better images of Jupiter that I've taken with this camera. Though only 30 degrees above the horizon, the resolution is pretty good - with a fair amount of fine detail resolved (included the disks of Ganymede and Io).


Next, an image taken by the Firewire camera in the near infrared - or NIR. This uses a pass band style filter - basically light greater than 742 nm is let through, the rest blocked (reflected) away.


Jupiter in NIR




Though in b/w, the resolution is much higher than the color shot. Much more subtle detail is visible, and even shading is visible on the disk of Ganymede. However, since it is in IR, there are differences in shading and details shown. But overall, this image is superior to the first one. This is due to two factors - 1) IR (and also red light) are much less scattered by the atmosphere and less prone to effects of turbulence and 2) a superior CCD in the DMK.

I can also do color imaging with the DMK - but this will require a filter wheel (automated is best) which is a lot more $$ than I have at the moment. But the color images will be worth the effort and cost as they will have superior resolution and color tone over the older camera.

So who wants to buy the doctor's updated image DVD - Cosmic Vistas II?

(It will have 2 to 3x the number images of the older version)