DMK21AU618 - first picture - Mars 11th March

[pilkinn]

Finally got to try out my new DMK21AU618.AS camera. This is just a plain monochrome capture - no filters. I have a set of Astronomik LRGB filters but no filter wheel yet.

[Olorin]

That is great first light

[pilkinn]

Thanks Olorin. I was quite surprised with the result as the sky wasn't exactly clear. I only realised just how bad the conditions were when the moon rose and was shrouded in thin cloud.

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[Virgoman]

That is a lovely sharp capture, Neil. Got to be happy with that as a tee off.

[astroeddie]

Have you captured three volcano cloud tops in that fantastic image ?

Eddie

[Clayton]

Very nice Neil

[Dielectric]

Cracker of an image, loads of detail, very impressed. I was imaging on the same night and saw these three 'cloud tops'. I only realised after I finished my shoot that I had not set my DMK to capture in uncompressed lossless format!! Was wondering why I got such a grainy image and why my usual wavelet tweaking was so horribly wrong

Gutted to the extreme but having seen your capture you have restored my faith.

[Space Cowboy]

Very sharp image!

[pilkinn]

Thanks all for the positive comments. I'm quite impressed with the DMK. It's a definite step up from the SPC900. It's more sensitive so I can have shorter exposure time per frame and therefore have more frames. Although to be fair to the SPC I was using a netbook which really couldn't keep up with the stream coming from the SPC. I'm now using a different PC which can handle the 60fps uncompressed stream coming out of the DMK. I'm not sure whether it's best to use 60fps or 30fps as others seem to use. I probably need to experiment.

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[Virgoman]

Very interested, Neil to see your comments re the SPC900. Were you using Sharpcap with it. I use it with mine and an Asus netbook. Had a "catch up" same problem as well with frames dropping all over the place. That was the case on battery power. Then when I put the netbook onto mains no more dropped frames! Strange or what?:) Anyway I am interested in your experience with the IS camera as I am thinking of making the change myself. Once again, lovely image.

Best regards,

Ralph

[astroman001]

Neil.

Although you used a 2.5x barlow and I used a 3x barlow, the distance the filter wheel takes up between barlow and CCD increases the projection and image scale. You will see a bug difference with the filter wheel in place.

regards

Peter

[johnh]

Impressive first try for sure.

John.

[pilkinn]

Peter. I'm using a powermate which apart from the 5x version don't increase the image scale much if you move the focal plane back. In fact the 2.5x actually descreases the size of the image slightly the further back you go. I have the 5x pm as well but at f50 I think I'd need some pretty good seeing to use it.

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