Having always been interested in the stars, I decided a short while ago to buy a telescope. The scope is a Meade ETX-90EC and it came with their LPI CCD device. This is basically a small CCD that you can use to capture images through the scope (apparently it’s roughly equivalent to a 6mm eyepiece). I’ve tried a few times to use this via my laptop and the supplied software to no avail so I decided to try some of the other applications out there. After downlaoding and installing AstroVideo I pointed the scope at the moon and tried the LPI. Instant success! The pictures aren’t anywhere near perfect and I haven’t tried to post-process them at all yet, but they’re a start.

The scope itself is very nice but the supplied software from Meade seems as though it were written a decade ago and was easily the most disappointing part of the entire package.

I’ve uploaded one of the images (reduced in size) just to show roughly what I managed 🙂 Hopefully practise will improve the quality!