Mead dsi-c

[bonsai]

Hi all i have a questio,can the meade dsi c guide and image at the same time through the eyepiece sorry if it is a stupid question but i am new to this any help would be great,and thank you all.nige :salute:

[barkis]

Yes you can guide and image at the same time with the DSI camera.

The site below may be of assistance to you, and there are updates available there too.

You may have to sign up with a user name and password, but it is free.

There are some video tutorials by a guy named Matt Taylor which you will find useful, although the quality is not brilliant.

Ron.

PS. You do not use an eyepiece, the camera goes straight into your telescope focuser, and acts as the eyepiece itself. That's for Deep Sky Objects. If you Image the moon or planets, then you will probably use eyepiece or Barlow projection into the camera.

http://www.meade4m.com/

[blinky]

I did not know you could image at the same time as guide with one camera. Surely the exposure for imaging needs to be quite a bit longer than the one for autoguiding? Am I missing something here

[Jeff RV]

I think some CCD's have 2 chips with this purpose in mind, the Meade DSI hasn't as far as i know.

Jeff.

[SteveL]

From my dim and distant past, and the 3 nights with Meade's envisage application (before I junked it and used something far far better), I vauguely remember the Meade Envisage application has a "bodged" guidng with single camera mode... i.e it takes the "imaging" picture, and then uses that one single image to adjust the mount, and take another image. So the time between mount corrections is equal to the exposure time for the image. Its guiding, but not really as we know it.

If you are talking about guding corrections every 1-5 seconds (depending), then no a single chip CCD cannot eally guide and image at the same time.

[bonsai]

I will watch and learn from all your comments this topic has generated alot of opinions which is good and i hope to find the answer within all of your comments.Yours not worthy nige.THANK YOU ALL.Nige

[bonsai]

Ps this can help others as well as me so all input is good for all newbies .Nige

[barkis]

I am basing my post on the video produced by Matt Taylor, who was referring to his first use of the DSI camera. He set the camera up to Image M51, and commenced the exposures. According to him, he then fell asleep. When he awoke, he found a great image of the galaxies on his laptop screen. No mention was ever made of guidance in that video. The software took care of everything according to Taylor. Those Videos are avaiable, so have a look. I think it's the first one in the series.Apart from an Intro by a Meade spokesman.

Many people use a DSI as a guider. As it only has a USB port, how do the guide commands get to their mounts?

My apologies to all, I have re checked he video, and what he did was take a series of 30 second exposures of M51 through his LX 200 12", so guiding was not used.

I have posted the link to the videos .

Ron.

http://www.meade.com/educational/dsi_videos/index.html

[SteveL]

Many people use a DSI as a guider. As it only has a USB port, how do the guide commands get to their mounts?

The DSI is used as a guide camera to take short images, and the controlling application (PHD, Guidedog, Maxim, etc) determine star movement. If the camera has no ST4 connection, then the corrections are then sent back to the mount via ASCOM PulseGuide commands, through a serial port from the computer to the mount/handset

[barkis]

Many people use a DSI as a guider. As it only has a USB port, how do the guide commands get to their mounts?

The DSI is used as a guide camera to take short images, and the controlling application (PHD, Guidedog, Maxim, etc) determine star movement. If the camera has no ST4 connection, then the corrections are then sent back to the mount via ASCOM PulseGuide commands, through a serial port from the computer to the mount/handset

Thanks for the explanation Steve.

Ron.