My first Magazine Sky & Telescope - 01.2019 | Page 31

HIGH-SPEED SCIENTIFIC
CMOS CAMERAS PORTABLE
ROBOTIC EYE HYPERSTAR
COLLIMATOR
Finger Lakes Instrumentation ♦
flicamera.com Lunático Astronomia ♦
tienda.lunatico.es Hotech ♦ hotechusa.com
Featuring extremely high sensitivity,
very low noise, and exceptionally
fast frame rates, the new line of
Kepler scientii c cameras with cooled
sCMOS detectors from Finger Lakes
Instrumentation are, according to
the manufacturer, bringing “a game-
changing price-to-performance ratio”
to the world of astronomical imaging
and challenging the i elds dominated
by conventional CCD cameras. We’ve seen a variety of sky monitors
designed for permanent observatory
installation, but the PocketCloudWatcher
is the i rst we know of made for
observers who set up in the i eld. About
the size of a deck of playing cards and
powered by an internal battery, the
device sends alerts to a smartphone app
when clouds roll in, offering a little peace
of mind for those of us who occasionally
doze off during long exposures. Starizona’s HyperStar optical system
transforms select 6- through 14-
inch Celestron Schmidt-Cassegrain
telescopes into f/2 astrographs.
But optimum performance requires
precise optical collimation, and that’s
where Hotech’s new HyperStar Laser
Collimator comes into play. Used
before heading out under the stars, it
simplii es the process of getting the
HyperStar dialed in to produce pinpoint
star images across the i eld of view.
U.S. price: from $9,995 U.S. price: $275 U.S. price: $515
COMPACT
SPECTROGRAPH EMISSION-NEBULAE
FILTER MULTI-PURPOSE
CMOS CAMERA
Starlight Xpress ♦ sxccd.com Oceanside Photo and Telescopes
♦ optcorp.com Meade ♦ meade.com
Starlight Xpress, a company serving
the amateur market since the earliest
days of the CCD revolution, has made
its foray into the world of spectroscopy
with the SX Spectrograph that
produces a 31-mm-long spectrum
ranging from 340 nm in the blue to 900
nm in the near infrared. It also features
a built-in guide camera and argon light
source for calibration. It works with a
wide range of astronomical cameras
made by Starlight Xpress and other
manufacturers.
U.S. price: $3,395
The OPT Triad Tri-band Narrowband
Filter passes the light of ionized
oxygen and hydrogen (at 493- and
656.3-nm wavelengths, respectively)
while blocking the rest of the visual
spectrum. It is specially designed for
shooting color images of deep-sky
emission nebulae with DSLR and one-
shot color astronomical cameras under
light-polluted skies.
U.S. price: $375 and $775
(1¼- and 2-inch fi lters,
respectively)
Based on a cooled 16-megapixel
Panasonic CMOS detector with a high-
speed USB 3.0 computer connection,
Meade’s new Deep Sky Imager IV
(or DSI-IV for short) is suited to lunar,
planetary, and deep-sky imaging.
Versions are available for either
monochrome or one-shot color imaging,
and the DSI-IV comes with its own
camera-control software for Windows,
Mac, and Linux operating systems as
well as ASCOM drivers for other popular
image-capture software. Look for our
Test Report on the DSI-IV later this year.
U.S. price: $1,199
sk yandtele scope.com • JA N UA RY 2 019
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