For the past few weeks, we have been in contact with an Italian amateur astronomer, who works with The Imaging Source DMK 31AU03.AS astronomy camera, using a Mac.

Based exactly between MXP airport and Milan, Alberto Mayer is not particularly concerned about light pollution, but still is able to capture outstanding images. Below are some of his deep sky images. I will be publishing more of his work in the coming days here in the Astronomy Cameras Blog.

Click on the images to see the originals and a description of the hardware and software used to capture the image.

M13 - Great Globular Cluster in Hercules

M51 - Whirlpool Galaxy

NGC 3628 - Spiral Galaxy in Leo

Accompanying his images, Alberto wrote:

I'd like to point out some 'strong points' about my 'cheap' way to do images because I'm working with pretty 'poor' instruments and I'm not working in dark places but always from my terrace in town (I'm lazy too!).

That could be interesting 'for the rest of us' that cannot spend big amount of money or transfer in dark places for the weekends and I guess that you should put this side in evidence on that blog.

Consider that my DMK camera is the more expensive piece in my setup since it cost more than my used Celestron 8 and more than my used Vixen GPDX mount! In addition I never did autoguide (so no additional scopes or computers = weight and money) but I worked only with 20 to 45 seconds frames-unguided. Rarely I attempted 1 minute but I think that the result is sufficiently (ngc 3628).

That's pretty teasing for everyone wants to begin/do some deep sky spending reasonable money and simply working with some precision doing good flat frames, dark frames etc and not wasting the collected photons!

The same camera for planetary and deep-sky imaging: 2 cameras in one this is surely the strong point of The Imaging Source DMK cameras.

We send out a great thanks to Alberto for his enthusiasm and for submitting such fantastic deep sky images!