Featured Company:

Celestron NexImage Solar System Imager

Today's shopping tips: "Be wise in purchasing ..... find best value one"

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Manufacturer: Celestron
Brand: Celestron
List Price: $99.00
Our Price: $84.95
You Save: $ 14.05 ( 14% )
(prices subject to change)
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours

Average Ratings:

Complete CCD solar system imager capable of producing high quality planetary images with tremendous detail / Greater light sensitivity and color fidelity


DESCRIPTION:

Binding: Electronics
Brand: Celestron
EAN: 0050234937122
Feature: Complete CCD solar system imager produces high-quality planetary images
Is Autographed: 0
Is Memorabilia: 0
Label: Celestron
Manufacturer: Celestron
Model: 93712
Publisher: Celestron
Studio: Celestron
Warranty: 1


FEATURES:

• Complete CCD solar system imager produces high-quality planetary images
• View and capture live video on your computer screen
• Software automatically filters out fuzzy frames for sharper image
• Easy to install and use
• Manually control gain, contrast, exposure time, and much more from your PC



ACCESSORIES:

• Introduction to Webcam Astrophotography: Imaging the Universe with the Amazing Affordable Webcam
• Celestron Ultima Barlow Lens
• Celestron Omni 2X Barlow Lens
• Celestron 94178 NexImage Reducer Lens
• Celestron UV / IR Cutoff Filter - 1.25"


SIMILAR ITEMS:

• Celestron 94178 NexImage Reducer Lens
• Celestron Accessory Kit
• Celestron Nexstar RS 232 PC Interface Cable
• Celestron Power Tank
• The NexStar User's Guide


CUSTOMER REVIEWS:

Customer Rating:
Summary: wasted my money
Comment: This camera is not compatible with Windows Vista 64 bit operating system. If you're running 32 bit Vista you're fine except you have to download and install the new driver. I'll gladly sell you mine. It's never been used.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Fine for moon viewing but it struggles for other viewing
Comment: I used the NexImager with my Celestron 130 SLT. It was very good for moon viewing but it struggled a bit with the planets. For example, I found that viewing Saturn through a normal eyepiece produced a better and sharper image than using the NexImage. Also the CCD resolution of 640x480 is low in this day when megapixel CCD's are commonplace even in low price cameras. My unit also produced a fair amount of noise when viewing a dark sky.

But it is fun to play with and given it's low price, it is worth having.

A more expensive and useful add-on would be to make it wireless to avoid the cable that runs from the telescope to your PC.

As a side note, I'm using the NexImage with a Macintosh Macbook laptop. Though the software is written for a PC, I am using it fine via VMWare Fusion hosting a Windows XP OS.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Barrel Too Small
Comment: Received new camera earlier than scheduled which is always great. Camera barrel was almost one-eight inch too small though which made securing in eyepiece holder difficult. I called Celestron to see what they could do for me. They were very nice and immediately sent me an RMA for a return. Return took about ten days from ship to my door which is normal. Barrel is now exactly 1.25". The camera itself is very cool - just used terrestrially so far but look forward to dark skies. If you have Vista you will need to download the driver from their web site - works fine.

Customer Rating:
Summary: not a good camera
Comment: from the good reviews on here about this product despite the bad reviews I went ahead and purchased this camera. I was disappointed. I was able to get a vista driver off of a forum and the camera operated correctly but the results were less than spectacular. I used this with a orion xt10 telescope and the images that came through were fuzzy and blurry. I took better pictures by just placing my digital camera up to the eyepiece.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent tool, but with a learning curve
Comment: I purchased this camera from Amazon and have had a few weeks to test it out. Overall, I've found it to be an excellent tool for lunar and planetary imaging. It is easy to get started using, but to get really good images, you'll need to spend some time and you'll need to be technically adept. A few points are worth noting for newbies. All astro cameras in this price range are essentially webcams that have been modified to capture video through a telescope. This technology achieves image quality by sampling the best frames from the video and then stacking them on top of each other. This results in much more fine detail. This camera comes with two different pieces of software that must be used. The capture software gives a real-time view of the scope video, which allows you to focus, but you must be able to see the laptop screen while you adjust focus on the scope (unless you have a focus motor). The AMCap capture software also allows you to tune the brightness, contrast, frame capture rate and other important video quality metrics. Tuning the capture is a real art and takes practice. The second piece of software is the Registax post processing package. It takes the recorded video, collects and orients the moving image frames and allows you to tune the detail by bringing out features from different frames. The Registax package is relatively technical to use and is a bit intimidating. It takes several attempts to learn how to use it at a basic level, but the instruction PDF provided is very well done. Celestron's support faq site for this camera notes that the camera's internal BIOS can be modified to operate in RAW (uncompressed) avi mode, which will improve its image quality by about 2x. I downloaded the 3rd party utility to do this and also downloaded a better image capture program that allows easier processing of the RAW avi files. After spending several hours learning how CCD video imaging works and upgrading/tweaking, I was getting what I consider to be excellent planetary images with my Celestron NexStar 130 SLT Newtonian. This camera does not allow the use of eyepieces, but can be used with a Barlow. It is equivalent to a fixed 5mm eyepiece. I also bought the optional reducer (see my review of it). Because of the fixed focal character of the CCD chip, this camera is optimized for planetary and lunar imaging (I also did some filtered solar images), but it would be hard to get good deep space images with it, and a reducer is needed for the moon or sun, as they will fill the viewing area several time over. All in all, this is a great tool for the money and lets you produce really nice planetary images for a small price. However, if you're a newbie, you should plan to spend a weekend researching, tweaking and practicing before you get decent results. You can capture quick single frame stills, but they will be disappointing. The stacking and post processing is really needed to get good images.

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