Easy to use and setup with contrast control dial
Reviews (4)
A clever (and fun!) gadget
The name is somewhat misleading. What this is, actually, is a small, senitive black and white TV camera designed to slip into a telescope focuserin place of an eyepiece. Now this won't deliver images of faint, deep-sky objects- you need a cooled CCD and long exposures for that- but it will deliver excellent views of the moon and planets to a TV monitor, videorecorder of computer with video converter. Using videotape and a digitizer as a "poor man's active optics" it's possible to select frames and produce suprisingly good results.
At the asking price, it's a pretty good deal, too, and an inexpensive way to get started in digital astrophotograp
great addition to any telescope
This eyepiece is quite nice. I tried it out and was amazed at the results. I use it on a six inch reflecting telescope. I used it first on the best target in the night sky, the Moon. It looked as though I was looking through a window on an apollo capsule orbiting the moon. I am not kidding. It was great. I then moved over to Saturn. I could clearly see the rings and bands of clouds. This item is worth the cost!
Fun for bright objects
There was very little documentation, nothing saying anything about the focal length to give any idea of the actual magnification.
Fun for bright objects, I've used it to get images of Jupiter and Saturn and some of the moon. I could only faintly see Jupiter's biggest moons when viewing on the TV screen (with the contrast set so Jupiter is washed out). When using my video capture card I couldn't get the moons to show up at any level of contrast, but still got some medeocre pics of Jupiter itself. There's not a very wide feild of view so it's very dificult to center something without tracking.
I've noticed that I can use it as a poor-man's electronic microscope by attaching my 25mm Meade eyepiece to it and using my trypod to help steady and focus.
A fun toy but I wouldn't expect to get any nebula or any other faint object with it.
Beware...
A few things you must know before purchasing the eyepiece:
1. The display is MONOCHROME (black & white)
2. You will need a 9-volt battery
3. In order to hook it up to the TV, your TV needs to have a yellow-colored Video-In port. Many TVs have it, duh, but yours might not. Some of us might have pawned our good TV set just to get enough cash for an ETX-90EC.
4. Keep in mind that you will need to take your TV or VCR where your telescope is. You might need an extension cord.
Have fun~*
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