On April 27, 2007, Baader Planetarium became one of our resellers in Germany. This week, they have published two in depth pages (here and here), discussing our astronomy cameras (in German).

Below, is a summary of the benefits, which Baader Planetarium cites that The Imaging Source DMK series of astronomy cameras has over traditional web cameras. We have translated this information from German to English to make it accessible to our world wide audience. The source is cited below.

Baader Planetarium writes:

• Clean and robust, mechanical and electrical workmanship (metal casing with C/CS mount thread), such as is demanded in industrial applications. For example, conveyor belt surveillance and controlling in dirty production environments. Benefit: As the C/CS mount thread is spun in metal, it is possible to ensure a very tight fit onto the eye piece mount; thus any T2 accessory can be integrated.

• Extremely fast image capture and transfer via FireWire, monochrome (1024×768 pixel) and RGB color (640×480 pixel) with up to 30 frames per second (dependent upon the speed of the connected PC and/or hard disk). Benefit: Thanks to the fast image capture and transfer, moments of good seeing can be taken advantage of and thus the camera's raw image data capture can be optimally used.

• Very sensitive CCD (For example: Exposure time of the Moon at f/10 can be considerably shorter than 1/100 second). Benefit: Undesirable effects from bad seeing can be avoided. Narrow band color filters (such as Baader K-Line, SolarContinum, IR Pass) can be used to improve the image, even at relatively short exposure times.

• Low dark current noise and extremely low noise electronics (without cooling). Benefit: The Imaging Source astronomy cameras can be deployed for deep sky captures and as a guiding camera. Exposure time can be set manually at up to 3600 seconds.

• Image data from the DMK astronomy cameras are not compressed, nor electronically filtered. Benefit: True raw image data is guaranteed. These can be used for post-capture image processing.

• Free definition and application of a region of interest (ROI) on the live video stream. Benefit: When seeing is bad, it is often not necessary to capture the full 1024×768 pixels and to just concentrate on the best part of the image. This saves large amounts of storage.

• Singular images from the live video stream can be saved by pressing the space key; furthermore, image sequences can be saved.

• Professional and stable camera control software IC Catpure.AS.

Source: http://www.baader-planetarium.de/dmk/dmk_start.htm