GSTAR-EX CCD VIDEO CAMERA

 What an amazing tool for astronomy.
 This camera is capable of delivering live views of deep-sky objects on a PC or TV monitor in real time, fainter than the eye can see through the
 same telescope. It can produce images of everything from lunar and planetary to deep-sky objects without the need for fine guiding. 
 It gives instant feedback for focusing and can do event timing with millisecond accuracy.

 After using this camera for well over three years, it continues to astound me. It is simple to use, plug it in, turn it on and start observing.

 This camera shows an image live on the screen that reveals much fainter stars than can be seen even with good dark adaptation through the same scope.
 The camera achieves this by having a very sensitive CCD chip and summing up to 128 video frames internally before updating the screen output every
 2.56 seconds (max integration). It also has a wider spectral sensitivity then the eye, ranging from 350 - 1100 nanometers.

 When using this camera for imaging, I can now see immediately how the targets are focused, framed and how the subject looks live on the PC monitor.
 I use either GSTAR-Capture(see below) or Winfast PVR software(bundled with capture card) to record video files to a PC.
 
 Accurate guiding is no longer needed as video frame stacking software like  Registax  can easily compensate for a small amount of image drift when
 stacking the video file later.

These examples show screen grabs of the live view of Messier 42/43 and NGC 1977 nebulae through a 20 cm f/4 reflector. The GSTAR camera is set to full integration of X128 sense-up and maximum gain. Because the camera is not actively cooled, on hot nights a few hot pixels can be seen. The hot pixels can easily be removed when making images by subtracting dark frames. The camera can reveal faint objects even when the Moon is bright in the sky, or from light polluted city skies because of its sensitivity to a broad spectral range. In particular the red end of the spectrum, extending to 1100 nanometers (1.1 micron) which is way beyond our visual range of 700 nanometers.

A very difficult target visually, the Horse Head  Nebula is easily visible in the live view using a  20 cm f/4 reflector.   See here for my processed version of the    Horse Head Nebula.

Looking at the Crab Nebula (Messier 1), the 16th magnitude neutron star/pulsar can be picked out in this screen grab of the live image from the computer monitor, it's the fainter of the close pair near the centre of the nebula.

My computer monitor is a 19" LCD, so the borderless, full screen, live view image is much bigger than what you see here and it is this view that continues to amaze me every time I use the GSTAR-EX camera.   Turning up the contrast and brightness in the capture software, faint stars and nebula can be seen more easily in the live view but the noise is also exaggerated too. The pulsar is quite obvious now. I use this mode when searching for faint objects and I can identify almost any target on screen.

After stacking 400 x 2.56 second video frames and boosting the brightness and contrast levels, much detail is revealed and virtually all the noise is eliminated.  See this page for my LRGB image

GSTAR-EX Capture V4  A great piece of free software for image capture with  the GSTAR-EX camera has been developed by Steve  Massey and Chris Wakeman.  Features include:  the ability to capture at the correct frame rate with no  repeat frames, progressive mode de-interlacing for a  smooth output, borderless full screen view,   guide cross hairs, point and zoom for focusing,  countdown timer, snapshot button, object database  plus many other tools.  This software continues to be enhanced, so visit the    GSTAR-EX  page at  myAstroShop  for the latest  version.

 By adding a timing device such as a KIWI-OSD(no longer available 2010) to the video output of the camera, very accurate timing events can be observed,
 for example, lunar occultation and grazing events or  asteroid occultations .

 For many fine examples of lunar, planetary and deep-sky imaging done with this camera see  Steve Massey's  own website.

 Interested in getting one of these extraordinary cameras...

 * A review of the GSTAR-EX is in the July/Aug 2007 issue of  Australian Sky&Telescope magazine .

 See what other users are doing with this camera,  GSTAR-EX users image gallery .