Meade's vastly-improved Deep Sky Imager III is a full-color CCD imaging tool that produces exceptional images of astronomical objects, with its most stunning results delivered from those faint things which your eye can see but cannot gather color from due to their distance and brightness (or lack thereof). If you've got an AutoStar-equipped Meade telescope and a modern computer to work with, you'll be getting jaw-dropping results in no time.
The included AutoStar Suite & Envisage software package guides most any scope with an RS-232 port, and has "Drizzle" technology with any Meade AutoStar-equipped telescope. "Drizzle" technology uses the movements of two stars instead of just one to track the field during imaging, eliminating the need for polar alignment or the use of field de-rotation devices. With all telescopes, the software's zooming technology makes customizing the focus (so important in CCD imaging) easier than ever.
Attaching the device is as simple as inserting a 1.25" eyepiece, and it can be used exclusively as an imager upon any telescope (which accepts 1.25" eyepieces) if you like. The imager's Sony CCD sensor has fine resolution geared for long exposure success that's sure to please any amateur astronomer.
This is the color Deep Sky III; there is also a monochromatic "Pro" version which can use red/blue/green filtration to ultimately produce more color, or capture an even fainter object.
- Large (10.2 x 8.3mm) imaging chip
- Tiny 6.5-micron square pixels
- 16-Bit A/D conversion
- Uncompressed image signals delivered from sensor
- "Waffle iron" body design effectively cools
- Temperature sensor quickly reduces 'hot' or 'cold' pixel effects
- Current temperature matched to dark frames (so all pictures are calibrated)
- Automatic or manual exposure control from 1/10,000th second to 60 minutes
- Device operates upon stored power during exposures
- Separated digital & analog circuitry
- Automatic image alignment and stacking to create singular composite color image
- Image saturation and color balance adjustable without external software
- Hot and cold pixel refinement minimizes noisy pixel effect by gathering baseline info
- Live imaging histogram
- Time lapse photography
- Tracks image movement with two stars instead of one
- Created by NASA for processing images from the Hubble Space Telescope
- Eliminates need for polar alignment of telescope
- Eliminates need for equatorial wedge
- Corrects field rotation
- Use your AutoStar scope in altazimuth mode!
- Works with all telescopes accepting 1.25" eyepieces
- Simple and immediate real-time display
- Controls movement of all telescopes with RS-232 communication ports
- Pentium 4 1.4GHz computer (Pentium 4 2.1GHz recommended)
- 500 Megabytes of RAM
- 200 Megabytes of hard-drive space
- DVD-ROM drive
- Windows 2000, XP, or Vista
- USB 2.0 port