Celestron NexImage 10 Color - Astro Camera with 6.4 x 4.6 mm Sensor

Celestron NexImage 10 Color Camera for Moon and Planets - with Software

You have your new telescope and have observed Saturn and Jupiter. Now you´re ready to take the next step and start imaging them. But where do you begin? The Celestron NexImage 10 Solar System Imager is the perfect solution.

The NexImage 10 was developed in cooperation with The Imaging Source, a company which started to manufacture also cameras for astronomy in 2007. Since then, the CMOS sensors from ON Semiconductor and Sony have become significantly more powerful since then and allows better results in planetary imaging than ever before.

The NexImage 10 is the first NexImage series camera to incorporate USB 3.0 SuperSpeed! With more than ten million pixels coupled with high speed data transmission, the NexImage 10 produces clear and detailed lunar and planetary images. With super small 1.67 µm pixels, smaller telescopes with shorter focal lengths are still going to yield tremendous planetary detail. It’s one of the best valued, high-res USB 3 planetary imaging cameras on the market. Best of all, NexImage includes everything you need to get started, including Celestron´s easy-to-use software suite. The iCap capture software and RegiStax stacking software are the same powerful programs included with Celestron´s high-end Skyris cameras.

Simply point your telescope at the Moon or a planet and record a quick video. The software analyzes each frame of video, throws away the fuzzy ones, and perfectly aligns the remaining images. The result is a bright, clear image with the maximum amount of color and detail. NexImage 10 is a great way to get started with astroimaging, especially if you live in a light-polluted area. If you can see the planet in the sky, you can image it with NexImage 10!

The camera can also be used with MAC OS X.

Why more megapixels:

10 megapixels seem much more than neccessary for a planetary imager, but in combination with 1.67 micrometer pixel size, they make sense: now you do not only have high resolution, but you can alread max out the optics of short focal length telescopes without an additional Barlow lens. Thus you save the money for a high-quality Barlow!

The increased sensitivity of modern CMOS sensors compensates for the smaller pixel size, the signal-to-noise ratio has become better and better. As a result, for the NexImage 10 a sensor with small pixels was intentionally used which shows all detail even without additional extension of the focal length. Thus it is perfect for owners of smaller telescopes who do not already own a high-quality Barlow lens. The camera harmonizes very well with telescopes like a NexStar 6SE or a NexStar SLT 130 and delivers beautiful images of the Sun (only with solar filter), Moon, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. For beginners who don´t want to directly afford a large optics like a C11 and a pricier Skyris camera, the NexImage 10 is a perfect supplement for the NexImage camera series.

Via the USB-3 connection, the camera can transmit approximately 80 MB of data per second which is clearly above the data transmission rate of USB 2.0. You can either read out the entire sensor or, with the freely selectable "Region of Interest", limit yourself to the area which is occupied by the planet, thus achieving a higher frame rate.