Announcing the birth, scratch that, the arrival of new toys!

[p medcraft]

I have been playing with my new CGE 1400 for a few weeks now and am in love. But...
I cant help but be frustrated with Celestrons inability to put the essentials in the package, even in the top of the range scopes. So yesterday saw me receive a, wait for it...MEADE electric Microfocuser that amazingly fits celestrons as well, go figure (LOL). That stops the mirror shift problem and neatly provides the spacing for the focal reducer to work correctly for my camera. I just bought a Stellacam EX color for planetary, Planetary nebulas and fun in general. Anyone own one of these toys?
They are normally used in the field plugged into dinky little B&W TV's or into laptops. I managed to get mine to plug into a battered 7" portable DVD player I own which runs off its own battery and gives a fantastic colour screen image. I also bought a DVD screen capture unit that plugs into a USB port and allows me to capture frames of video directly from the Stellacam into my laptop without the need for expensive TV cards or cabling. The software it comes with seems better than that recommended by the company that sold me the Stellacam EX. It may have already been done by others but I couldn't find any information so it may be of interest to some. I am looking to do some images tonight and will let you know how it goes.

Paul Medcraft

[Striker]

Paul, I would be intersted in how the Stellacam EX goes.....I may be receiving one of these in the near future....just to play around with...they say the live images on screen are excellant......most say they will never look through an eyepiece again.

Keep us updated.

[beren]

Sounds good Paul , just hope the cloud dissappears by dusk in Perth im eager to get out too {Ie:Mars :innocent: }

[Daemon]

Paul, I was wondering if you'd be willing to venture your opinion on the CGE mount in regards to stability, tracking accuracy, degree of tracking error and error rate, ease of alignment etc. I was also wondering how you find the CGE14 in general and in regards to portability. Just about everybody I've ever talked to agrees that a 14inch SCT isn't a portable device (it's transportable, but you don't move it around for fun), but someone I was speeking to in the US a few weeks ago insisted that their C14 on a Losmandy G11, while a bit of a heave, was no great problem to take out and set up at dark sky sites (no worse than any 10" plus SCT, they put it). Naturally, I'd preffer to hear independant cofirmation of this before I take it to heart.

The reason I ask is that the CGE1400 is still on my perhaps list as a deep sky long exposure CCD system.

Thanks

Daemon