DSI PRo Questions

NEED Help! Have a new setup and am looking for info on using my DSI pro mono camera with a meade 10" LX. I also have a meade 3.3 reducer/flatter but no t-adapter. My question is what is the best setup and do I need the t adapter to use the equipment. If so which one do I need.

I do not have a wedge for it yet and plan on just taking short duration photos with it 5-10 sec. Any suggestion would be great on how your setup looks and where I can find accessories to complete the setup. Have looked high and low and not to much info on what I really need to get going.

Second Question: Is it best to use a guide scope with second camera or a flip mirror/off axis, ect for photos. I am trying to avoiding dumping to much money into the scope before hereing back from folks that are up and up on the hobby. Thanks for your reply in advance.

I have a DSI-Pro and a Meade LX200, but they have never gotten together for imaging. I use the DSI-Pro for guiding, and it seems to do a good job and is fairly sensitive, so that might be a good start for imaging. I also have WAY more experience imaging in Alt-Az than you should ever want. You could get a field de-rotator, but only if a wedge won't work for some reason. Believe it or not, I think you will be able to get some reasonable results on many brighter objects without either. You will see image rotation in less than a minute no matter where you look, but I will also bet that in many parts of the sky you can get 15 seconds with rotation hidden by other imaging effects. And for that short, a good fraction of your images should be OK without guiding. I am not sure if you need a T-mount, as my camera came with a nosepiece that just fits in place of an eyepiece. I am not sure what software came with the camera, or what you already have. I know CCDSoft (what I use) will NOT talk to a DSI. Don't know about the other capture programs. I suggest to start with, just use the software that came with the camera and see what you can get. Do that before getting other toys. (Eventually, you might decide you want a new mount, a new camera, filters, a guide scope, a guide camera, etc., etc...)

One thing that I recommend though, is getting a program that can rotate images as well as shift them when you align multiple images. You will need that. I use CCDStack, and as far as I know, that is the only program that does scaling, in addition to shifting and rotating.

Good luck. Show us what you take.

Charlie