Adirondack Astrovid Stellacam ex Info??

Im thinking about buying a stellacam ex camera. anyone out there used one? the deep sky pictures taken with the camera on their website seam to be pretty good! Any info would help, thanks David L

I recently imaged the horsehead nebula with one of these and also completed one of the first ever tri-color images with one. I've had mine since early March. They are simply amazing! I have not used an eyepiece since this great observing tool arrived. I use to be the most frequent visitor to my club's dark-sky site with my 16" truss-tube dob. I haven't been there once since the camera arrived. I now work from my driveway and use my 4.2" scope under heavy light pollution to see nearly as much as at the dark-sky site. This camera will triple the aperture of your scope at a minimum (in the realm of light-gathering ability). I have an expensive ccd camera also, but this one is much easier to use and more fun. It can be used for more things, but it doesn't make images as nice or as deep in magnitude as the much more expensive integrated and cooled ccd camera. The Stellacam EX is the biggest advance to come along in amateur astronomy in the past decade, in my opinion, and when everyone eventually gets to see what they can do, everyone will start using them. I will never purchase another eyepiece and I am contemplating selling some of my eyepieces that I spent hundreds of dollars on. They will be worthless in time as the quality of these cameras improve. If you need more info, check the Yahoo videoastro or stellacam EX groups. We have dozens of images posted there.

By the way, I now observe real-time with the live images blown-up on my 20" tv inside my house. I control the scope with The Sky software from over 60 feet away. The image scale is incredible and I don't have to worry about dark-adaptation or cold weather. It is like looking through the largest eyepiece you've ever seen! The stars twinkle and the atmosphere is easily discernible for the same feeling as viewing with an eyepiece, but there's much more there to see. For me, the camera adds about 3 magnitudes to what I can normally see with an eyepiece. The only thing that suffers is some field-of-view, but you'd have to give the FOV up if your scope was 3 times larger anyway. Have I convinced you yet? Here's my latest image of M27 from a 4.2" telescope.

--Lonnie (captain video)

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David,
"Your mileage may vary" (I've always hated that weasely disclaimer!). Having heard nothing but superlative things about the Stellacam EX and seeing countless fantastic images on the Web taken by folks with modest setups from light-polluted skies, I bought one this summer. Tried it virtually every clear night for three weeks before giving up and sending it back.

It performed fine on lunar, planetary, and stellar objects--but so does my two-year old Philips webcam. The huge disappointment with my Stellacam came on deep sky objects, where it didn't capture as much detail on DSO's as I could see visually through the same 'scopes--let along two to three times more it was touted to produce on these faint fuzzies! This was through 10" and 16" scopes and with focal lengths ranging down to f/3.3

My Stellacam EX was confirmed by AVA to be functioning properly when I sent it back. "User error"? Perhaps, but this thing is pretty foolproof and I've got a fairly strong background in computers, photography, and ATM'ing. Temperature? (I was after all trying this in the worst of a muggy East Coast summer.) Well, some of the spectacular images I've seen were posted from warm climates... and I also did some testing with cold gel packs to chill the CCD sensor, without much noticeable improvement.

Perhaps I just got a lemon of a CCD, but I'd certainly recommend if you buy one that you get it from AVA. They cheerfully took mine back, and I'll certainly deal with them on my future imaging needs--gotta' support vendors that are this helpful.

If you get one, let us know how it works out!
Jim