Live Display from Telescope

Hello,

I hope this is the correct area to ask this.

I have a Celestron Ultima 8 and was trying to find a way to display live images from the telescope. I have several ideas but wanted to see what the experts would say.

This is the setup I am looking for. We have a star party late in the year and it is alot of fun but my family gets cold and heads for the tent. This requires me to setup the object I want to view and call to my family to come take a look. This gets quite old after awhile. What I wanted to do was setup a laptop display in the tent. This way when they head for the tent, they can still enjoy the sky by viewing the live images on the laptop.

What other equipment should I use to accomplish this? I was looking to get the Canon Rebel XL but I found out it can't do this. Please help me out.

Thank you,

Jerry

Jerry,

I use a Sony HandyCam DVD201, an old Commodore 64 monitor, a scopetronix Digit T system, and a 40mm Plossl. The HandyCam has a 10x optical zoom, manual exposure, and manual focus controls.

It is not much for DSO, but it is great for Jupiter, Saturn, and especially the Moon.

The handycam remote control allows you to Zoom and record to DVD with the push of a button.

I bought the Handycam a little over a year ago. The newer chips may be more sensitive to light now and might let you do DSO. A handyCam comes with a hefty price though.

I have also coupled other cameras to EPs. The best I can tell you is experiment and see what you can come up with. X10 has some wired cameras that might work.

Don Durbin