4th Observing Session: Moon Redux

Noticing a clear night last night I quickly set up the telescope with the intention to photograph the Moon again, but this time with the Meade Color DSI II camera instead of my Canon SLR to see the difference in camera quality.

What you see below is the Moon in its "Waning Gibbous" phase with about 70% of the surface visible. This mosaic was made up of only 3 exposures with slight sharpening and color correction in Photoshop.

One way to image Deep Space Objects (DSO)

Imaging DSO is fine if you have a SLR camera, but what if you want longer exposures and convenient computer control? This is where something like the Meade Deep Sky Imager II Color CCD Camera comes in. The Meade DSI II allows you to attach the camera directly to a telescope eyepiece, then with the included software you can see a real-time preview of what you are looking at and have the computer do the work of capturing the images and stacking them for the best image possible. The DSI II also comes with an instructional DVD to help you get up and running right away as the software can be pretty daunting for the first-time user.

The downsides to something like the Meade DSI II is that it is not very high resolution for the price (the camera is less than 0.5 megapixel in resolution) and the Meade DSI III with its 1.5 megapixel resolution costs just about twice as much as the Canon XTi (10MP) that I talked about in a earlier post...so know that astrophotography cameras are something that are not cheap when compared to regular SLR or point-and-shoot cameras on the market.


The DSI II Color CCD Camera.


The DSI II Color CCD Camera out of the box.


Close-up of the CCD. Be careful as the CCD is exposed with the lens cap off.