Hello Friend,

                        It was a star party nightmare, never to be repeated.

       At Starfest, many many Moons ago, I recall having my very first experience with a CCD Camera.

Now, I had dabbled with Astrophotography in the past with taking some nice photographs of Comet's,
mostly either on a camera tripod, or piggybacked on a Celestron 8.

     But this was the first time I was going to attempt to use a new CCD camera, at the time, called the
ST-4 by a Company called SBIG. 

To ensure that this first attempt at CCD  was successful, I asked
my friend, John Taglione, a senior IBM engineer to operate the software and camera controls, and PC.

       As the night progressed, we were having a heck of a time, trying to focus an image through the camera,
and we were facing a blank screen.

 Try as I might, twiddling with the focusing knob on the Celestron 8, we just could not get an image on the screen.
(We didn't realize that the size of the chip was so small back then, you had to have the camera precisely centred
  in the field of view, and a very narrow field of view it was at that).

   Then a "miracle" occured.   John was able to focus an image of a star on to the PC screen....
all that fiddling, and playing with the controls finally payed off.

And that's when we noticed that dawn was breaking, and the Sun was coming up....

      Yep, we had spent all night, fiddling with this technology to get it to work, and when it finally did, the game
was over.

          My first experience with CCD' imaging was enough to put me off it for some time.

Fortunately, for you  Friend, the experience will not be the same today.

    Why?

Because manufacturers such as Celestron. Mallincam & QSI have improved the ease of use of these
imaging devices today, to be far easier to use, and one can actually achieve stellar results in a very
short amount of time.

    You won't need a Senior IBM engineer to use them.  But if you do....I know a guy.........

Clear Skies,

Ray "It's been a hard day's night" Khan

PS If you are just starting out, many customers have reported excellent results, at low cost with
      the Celestron Neximage 5.