Hi Dave, Bruce Grim (bgrim@erda.net) has what Debbie recommended (an Astrovid) and is pretty happy with it. He had it mounted on the side of the Big Scope recently looking through nothing more than a 135mm camera lens and was able to show several deep sky objects. The ranger at Bryce Canyon that runs the star parties there recently bought an STV from SBIG ( http://sbig.com/sbwhtmls/stv_announcement.htm ) that does an even better job, albeit at a higher price. Note that neither of the above show images live. They do need to integrate but only for a short time so their images might best be described as near real time. If you really want to go live you're probably going to have to go with some sort of low light camera like those available from Super Circuits ( http://www.supercircuits.com ). I've got a couple of their cameras and they do great for timing occultations. On the plus side they are much cheaper than the integrating cameras but on the down side about the only DSOs I've been able to see with them are bright star clusters. The only other truly live option might be some sort of light intensifier but they get pretty pricey and the images tend to be less than great. Patrick astrodeb@charter.net wrote:

Dave,

Try this.

http://www.astrovid.com/prod_details.php?pid=6

Deb

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From: diveboss@xmission.com Date: 2005/03/20 Sun AM 11:23:24 MST To: utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Camera for Live Views of DSO's

Look here. <http://www.meade.com/dsi/index.html>

Quoting Naz & David <naz_david@msn.com>:

...

I enjoy DSO's visually at dark sites with my little apo and mct but its hopeless in my backyard. The amount of light pollution (aka wasted energy) in Salt Lake City is almost against the national interest and certainly doesn't suggest a commitment to any kind of greenhouse gas reduction.....

What can the group recommend as a camera for viewing DSO's live on a pc? I don't have the time to do any processing or get the kind of results Tyler is getting but would just like to be able to show my lad what a DSO looks like beyond a smudge. I'd like to store some results but do not want to muck about with video.

Cheers

David