Mars, September 22 2005

[h0ughy (David)]

sorry, did i hear you say you work at JPL and you have your own private probe!!! Wow, what are you going to achieve in november!!

[LT_Ng]

Bird,

Your recent Mars images are so smooth and excellent, especially for the color.

I would like to hear your comments on comparing ToUcam with your new planetary camera. Is your new camera user friendly with Window XP? It is seemed very expensive?

Thanks.

LT

[bird (Anthony Wesley)]

Hi LT.

The new camera is very much better than the ToUCam in many ways, and so it ought to be for the price! - but it's a monochrome camera so you would need extra hardware - a filter wheel and R,G,B filters.

The camera is compatible with Windows, and it comes with a simple application that you
could use for capturing under Windows.

I use the camera under Linux, with an excellent free application called Coriander.

I'd estimate that the Dragonfly Express can give images that are at least 2x the effective resolution of the ToUCam, because it's more sensitive and sends uncompressed 16 bit data. The only downside is that the pixels are larger - 7.4 micron compared to the ToUCam, so that images appear 30% smaller at the same focal length.

For me, that means I now use a 5x powermate instead of a 4x that I was using earlier in the year. With an extension tube I can make the 5x into a 6x or 7x, so the loss of image scale with the DX is not a problem.

There is a positive side to larger pixels - they have more capacity, and this means a larger dynamic range is possible as compared to the 5.6u pixels in the ToUCam.

regards, Bird