[hoffman_man (Keith)]

Hi everyone.

As a long time lurker and first time poster, I'd like to say first of all, thanks very much for everyone's contributions to this site so far. It has been a wealth of information in helping me develop my interest in this amazing hobby.

I am only very new to astronomy, but have had an interest for many years. I started out with binos and a planisphere and for Christmas was given a telescope. My scope is one of the lower end newtonian gotos that Meade produce. Not bad for what it is, but at 4.5 inches it's not exactly Hubble.

In a fit of madness on Friday, I decided to shoot some .avi footage of Jupiter with our home digi-cam. Attached is the results, after going through registax and PS. This was taken by simply holding the camera up to the eyepiece (12mm pl). I know that the image is less than impressive, but the sense of satisfaction I got out of even achieving this has been pretty good. As such, I am keen to keep shooting images through the little Meade to see just how far I can push the little thing; hence the reason for this post.

The Philips Toucam seems a pretty popular unit for imaging. As the image is projected directly onto the ccd, how much is the image magnified? Would you say the Toucam is the equivalent of a 12mm ep or smaller?

In a little scope like my own, would I see much anyway? Is what I'm hoping to achieve beyond the capabilities of the little tyke? The other option I'm toying with is one of the steady-pic mounts that are on the market. These are the mounts that hold a camera directly up to the eyepiece. The camera I have is a Kodak DX6340. It's 3.1MP but does allow for manual adjustment. Unfortunately it only shoots video at 320x200.

What is everyone's thoughts on the matter? The toucam is a little more expensive than the mount granted, but would the results be worth it? If I go down the Toucam path, is the IR filter really needed?

Cheers

P.S. Does anyone out there have the same scope that I do? I'm interested to hear what your battery life is like?