For those amateurs looking for a good digital camera to use for astrophotography I'd like to recommend you look at the Casio QV-XXXX series from the QV-2000 to the QV-8000. Why? Two main reasons to use these cameras, first, they allow up to a 64sec exposure! Most digitals tap out at 8 seconds and if you can shoot 8x longer then it will require fewer images to stack to get the desired result. Second, these cameras have numerous manual adjustments including focus, f-stop, etc.

I've shot the planets, Moon, star fields, and deepsky objects using my QV-8000 for the past 18 months. The link below will show images of the February Lunar eclipse and other lunar shots taken with my camera. http://www2.hoodel.com/highskies/astro/obgallery.htm
This link shows a wide field shot of 64sec slightly massaged in Photoshop. http://www.rmastro.com/images/ScorMarsSagi1.jpg

This link shows The Swan/Omega Nebula, and is a composite of 5 images from the Casio merged in MaximDL. http://www.rmastro.com/images/swanpbt.jpg

I normally mount the digital camera via a homebuilt video camera mount. A description of this mount can be found at this link. http://www2.hoodel.com/highskies/astro/projects.htm

Send me an email if you have questions!

• Digital Cameras For Astronomy - comet61 - July 18, 2001 - 06:22 UTC
• Choosing Digital Camera for Astrophotography - jasiewicz - March 4, 2002 - 02:03 UTC