Help, want a CCD camera

[Tilling1977]

Hi,

I am looking for a ccd camera for my Celestron Nexstar 4SE I have been looking at the Celestron NexImage and was wondering if this was any good. The reason I have been looking at it is its in my price range (around £130)

Is this any good or can anyone recommend something better?

Thanks for any help

[Daniel-K]

the neximage will get good lunar and some ok planet images ( need a barlow) its not designed to take take long exposures (i think ) so it wont be any good for DSO'S although people have modified webcams to take long exposures and got some decent pictures of DSO'S if its AP you want to get into then try getting a cannon 300d they come up quite often and for about£150 all you need is the t adapter to connect it to you scope you will get far better results and wont be frustrated getting shabby images some more of the AP pros will be along with some good advice soon enough

[Chris]

What kind of objects are you interested in imaging? this will help us give you advice:)

[Tilling1977]

Am hoping to get some shots of the moon and planets to start off with but was hoping to get some deep sky objects later on once I get to grips with it.

[Chris]

Right I see, as Daniel says generally you can't image every type of object with just one type of camera, webcams like the Nexstar are good for planets and the Moon, and DSLR's are good for DSO's and the Moon.

I would concentrate on webcam imaging of the planets and Moon with you type of scope and mount:

Your 4SE Maksutov scope has a high focal ratio (f/13) which basically means you can magnify objects well (frame an object in a narrow field of view) but the optics are slow i.e it doesn't grasp light very effectively so any faint objects such as DSO's would require much longer exposures compared to say a f/5 Newtonian reflector. Also your scope has a long focal length and this makes accurate tracking for long exposures more difficult than a short focal length, just like writing your name is easier with a pen, than a pen on the end of a pool cue:) plus your mount is a single arm alt/az which won't be accurate enough to track for long exposures, and will suffer field rotation, you really need a sturdy equatorial mount for long exposures.

for webcam imaging of planets you scope and mount will be pretty good because you can mag up well to make the planet appear larger plus the slow optics suit bright objects like planets, also your mount will be fine as you don't take long exposures of planets so you don't need accurate tracking, instead you film the planet at say 10 frames a second and stack the individual frames in Registax which is free to down load, this stacking will bring out the planetary detail captured on the frames when the Earths atmosphere is less turbulent.

You can try webcam imaging on the cheap by buying a cheap CMOS webcam from a supermarket, or using a xbox cam, all you do is remove the lens and cover the LED, then attach some 32mm pipe on the front so it can be attached to the scope like you would an eyepiece, software wise all you need to do is download Sharpcap for capturing and as mentioned Registax for stacking:)

hth

Chris

[Tilling1977]

Thanks thats a really big help, will defo give it a go.