Web Cam Astrophotography

You can now have a CCD for a fraction of the cost. Web cams can take awesome planetary and lunar astrophotos right out of the box.

Web cams have changed amateur astrophotography profoundly.

You can use the capture software that comes with the cam for capturing shots and then use freeware to process the results. Can’t get much cheaper than that. Of course for better results it is you should use specialized software, but that is available on the cheap as well.

And if you are a do-it-yourselfer, web cams could be adapted to take long exposure astrophotos, pretty nice, right?  Plus there are ready to go, web cam based planetary imagers now available from Celestron, Meade and, Orion. Meade and Orion also have imagers for long exposure, deep-sky imaging. All these include software. They are however more expensive.

If you already have a web cam, that is great, you only need some software which can be downloaded for free, and an adaptor to connect the web cam to your telescope. If you don’t own one the following cams have proven to be good for astrophotography and good deals can be found on eBay and other places as well.

-Vesta pro also by Philips. Others have with great success. It can also be adapted for long exposures.

-ToUcam Pro by Philips PCVC740K or PCVC840K ToUcam PRO II. Using the new one as a dedicated planetary imager and adapting the PCV740K for long exposure astrophotography.

-Quickcam pro by Logitech. It does a good job though and can also be modified for long exposures.

-There are other web cams which are good for astrophotography but these three that work.