Celestron Neximage CCD..........any good?

[aries]

Found this whilst browsing, and although I have a ccd (Creative, thanks Naz!)

wondered if these are as good as they look?. Or is the Toucam better?. i.e the

Pro II.

http://tinyurl.com/42dwlx

Nick.........

[scotastro]

The Neximage is a modified Toucam with a true CCD chip rather than CMOS one. The camera is very light and has a fixed nose piece which is threaded for filters.

A guest brought his Celestron 6SE with a Neximage which he had not used before. Saturn was a little low in the sky for really good results, but in the raw image some banding on the planet was seen and the rings were very distinct. On the Moon it resolved detailed very well. Overall on the two night we used it the results were very encouraging. Obviously it is designed for imaging the planets, but it does register stars too as we discovered when imaging the Moon with two stars of 5th and 7th mag about to be occulted.

The controls allow a fair range of adjustment to get the right look to the image. But the control are also the one thing that stands out a poorly thought out. Most of the controls are set using sliders, but as there is no numerical figure relating to position of the sliders reproducing levels of Brightness or Gain on the same object on a different night may prove tricky.

Image capture uses AMCap sowatware which also works with most webcams. The version of Registax is supplied and has good instruction.

Overall I think it is a good basic planetary imager.

Scotastro

GAC

Galloway Astronomy Centre

[aries]

Hi scotastro, and thank you for such an informative run-down of it,

as I would use a ccd for Planets, to be able to have the frame count go up

for stacking, and to enhance some detail, it seems very good.

Thanks again.........

Nick........