Just a little help so my children can further there interest

[Kennymid1]

Hi there I have a 12" lx200 and I am looking to invest in a ccd camera for it mainly because my children like to see what I'm looking at but they are quite young and it would be easier if I could show them in real time on a screen I have been looking at the orion starshoot range mainly the g3 and the deep sky imager 2 I have only ever really used my cannon dale for piccys before and would like to with a bit of practice get some great pics with a ccd in the future your opinions are greatly appreciated cheers

[badgerchap]

A dslr is a great place to start, I'd say! You'll get pretty good image size with the focal length on the lx200. If your dslr has liveview, you should be able to show the kids, although DSO's may be unimpressive from liveview - they really need long exposures to bring out the details. Similar to the Orion star shoot are the qhy cameras from modern astronomy if you want to compare / contrast

[JamesF]

There are high-sensitivity video cameras that can build a picture of what's in the eyepiece on-screen over a period of a few seconds, but I don't believe they're cheap. Because eyes and cameras don't work the same way what you'll see on-screen from a camera is not really what you get in the eyepiece. Planetary images are quite vague in my experience when displayed on-screen and DSO images take time to do (up to ten minutes exposure time is not uncommon).

I'm not sure there's a good answer here

James

[DoctorD]

Low light security cameras like the Samsung SBC 2000 can give good results, although you will probably need a focal reducer for your SCT. I use a F3.3 with my C8 to good effect, although you can also use 1.25" reducers as the chip size is quite small.

Have a look here for some low cost options;

http://www.astrophoto.co.uk/cameras.htm

Or have a chat with Bernard at Modern Astronomy.

http://www.modernastronomy.com/camerasAstroVideo.html

You can either capture on a laptop or display on a small TV (my preference).

Hope this helps

Paul

[DoctorD]

You could also have a look at the SGL Video Astronomy forum - it's under Science->Video Assisted Astronomy.

Paul