The DMK 21AF04.AS: A Great Planetary Imager
Or at least I think it will be, I just ordered one so it better be a good one.
Based on last month’s Sky and Telescope review of the DMK 21AF04.AS…
Ok, let me pause a minute and offer that these guys please hire a marketing person to name their products. How the hell am I supposed to recommend a camera whose name I have to write on my hand to remember?
“Hey Bill, have you tried the new DMK 21AF04.AS?”
“The what?”
“Why the DMK 21AF04.AS, of course. It’s a great little camera that only cost me 400 bucks.”
“What’s it called again?”
Sigh. “The DMK 21AF04.AS goddamit.”
You know Bill’s not gonna go out and buy the camera because he won’t remember the name. Instead, he’ll call me up and ask, “Hey Tony, what was the name of that camera you thought was so great?”
“IT’S THE DMK 21AF04.AS FOR CHRISSAKES BILL!”
“Oh. Okay. Jeez dude, you don’t have to be an asshole. Umm, what’s the website?”
Now that’s a good question:
At least that’s easy to remember.
Now, on with our regularly scheduled post…
As I was saying, based on last month’s Sky and Telescope review of the DMK 21AF04.AS, I’ve decided to purchase one to capture this year’s Mars opposition.
I’ve been using a Phillips Toucam webcam connected to a laptop to record planets, and while I have had good results using that setup, this camera boasts a 60 frame per second frame rate. That is much faster than I can operate the Toucam.
Faster frame rates mean that you can take a whole lot of pictures with really short exposures, which will “freeze” the seeing. What this means is that among all of those hundreds of images, SOME of them will be crystal clear because they were taken during the calm periods in our boiling atmosphere.
if you’ve ever looked through an eyepiece on a telescope at, say, 200 power, you know what I’m talking about. Images at high magnification roil in the eyepiece, making seeing any details very hard because you’ve not only magnified the object, you’ve also magnified the atmosphere, which is very turbulent most of the time.
It’s the same effect that causes the stars to twinkle, but magnified 200 times.
Once you’ve taken your movie at these high frame rates, then, with software, you can select only the sharpest frames and add them together to produce images that rival the HST.
Here’s an example:
Image Credit: AstronomyCameras.com
The camera costs $390.00 so it’s really a no-brainer for astro-geeks like me. I’ve read some good followup info on the astronomycamerablog and I’m excited to get my camera.
I plan to attach it to my LX200 at f/20 for the planets and my Coronado PST for solar imaging. And of course I’ll post the images I take along with commentary on how I like the camera right here on this bat station.
Technorati Tags: astronomycameras, coronado solar filters, DMK21AF04.AS, mars opposition 2007, telescopes
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Check out what others are saying about this post...[...] are the words of Tony Darnell over at the Astronomy Buff Blog. It looks like he is excited to be getting his hands on the camera, but does not really like [...]