Meade Deep Space Imager: a point-and-shoot astrocamera (almost)

It's not new but it's certainly innovative enough for us to groove on. Meade Instruments has developed a Deep Sky Imager for budding astronomers to shoot "stunning" deep sky digital photographs. The imager works with "any telescope" and sports Sony's Super HAD CCD sensor and the AutoStar software suite for a whole mess of camera and image manipulation capabilities. The USB 2.0 imager also doubles as a "sensitive and easy to use" autoguider for keeping "any telescope" locked onto deep-sky objects — kinda important for those long night-sky exposures, dig. At $299, this is about as close to a point-and-shoot astrocamera that you're gonna get.

[Thanks, oshean]

[Tom @ Dec 19th 2005 2:06AM]

Interesting that it's only 250,000 pixel resolution.

[wm @ Dec 19th 2005 2:06AM]

Wow, an imager with built in "censor"!?!? Does this enable telescopes with parental controls? Will it only take images of certain heavenly bodies?

[crap @ Dec 19th 2005 2:06AM]

HAH, piece of crap, same thing as a modded webcam, just a helluva lot more expensive

[Chris @ Dec 19th 2005 2:06AM]

Hardly a piece of crap, it works very nicely. And no, you're not going to be able to buy a webcam, mod it, and then have it autoguide your scope for $299.

Orion just came out with a competitor. Looks nice.

[crap @ Dec 19th 2005 2:06AM]

Chris, you might wanna google for modding webcams and autoguider software, you can get a full guiding system for half that price.