Shoot the Moon (and the planets too)!
Meade's exciting Lunar-Planetary Imager (LPI) works with nearly any telescope to capture striking, color images of Earth's near neighbors and some deep-sky objects, too. It'll even capture daytime terrestrial images.
The Meade LPI can be used on any telescope that uses .965-inch or 1.25-inch eyepieces. It fits right into the focuser in place of the eyepiece, and its VGA resolution (640x480 pixels) color CMOS chip is capable of creating quality lunar and planetary images, as well as daytime terrestrial images. And because exposure times can be extended to 15 seconds, you'll get great shots of bright deep-sky objects as well. The effective magnification of the camera is similar to that of a 6mm eyepiece. You can also double or triple this magnification level by using a Barlow lens. That will let you make super, up-close images of the planets.
AutoGuiding
With an Autostar-equipped Meade telescope, the LPI will AutoGuide to stay on target. Cables are included with the Autostar Suite for linking a PC to the RS232 (serial) port on the telescope. Through this, the software can make corrections as the LPI tracks on a planet or star. And AutoGuiding is as easy as making a single image. An initial image is downloaded from the LPI to the computer. Once that's accomplished, you need only draw a box with the computer's mouse over the star or planet to be tracked, and the LPI will do the rest, keeping itself right on target. When the LPI is used in tandem with the Meade LX200GPS telescope with Smart Drive, stars as faint as 10th magnitude can be tracked and imaged.
Easy to Use
Making lunar and planetary images with the LPI is fun and simple. After connecting the telescope to a PC and installing the software, you'll only have to do the following to make images you can be proud of:
Open Autostar Suite, click the "Image" drop-down menu at the top of the program and select "LPI Imaging". The camera's dim red L.E.D. "on" light will glow, indicating you are connected.
Click the drop-down menu under "Object" and select the type of object you want to image; use "Moon" for taking images of the Moon, for example.
Use an eyepiece in the telescope to center the planet or region of the Moon that you wish to image; then remove the eyepiece from the telescope's focuser and slide in the LPI camera.
The image will then appear in the "Live" box on your computer. Focus the telescope to get the sharpest image, using the "Magic Eye" tool in the software program to determine best setting.
Hold down the left mouse button and draw a box around a region of interest, and let go. The LPI will "track" on that region during the exposures.
When ready, just click the "Start" button, and you will start tracking and creating images. You can create and save as many images as you like. The LPI software automatically aligns multiple images and combines them into one superior image. Since atmospheric conditions may degrade the quality any single image, the LPI software's "Min Quality" setting can be set to discard poor-quality images and only combine images at or above the setting chosen. You can also reject dark frames or save every image taken instead of just accepting the final sythesized image.
Click "Stop" to finish. The LPI software will automatically name and save your final image. It's that easy!
Manual Mode
As your familiarity with LPI software improves, you can over-ride all automatic settings and take control of nearly every aspect of the operation to add a personal, individual touch to the imaging process. For example, the exposure settings can be user-controlled from .001 to 15 seconds. Below are most of the primary features of the LPI software interface for controlling the camera:
Live - Displays what the imager sees in the "Live" tab in the display area.
Exposure - This is the exposure time in seconds (from .001 to 16 seconds), the up and down spin buttons adjust the exposure up and down by .5 f/stop.
Gain and Offset - Like contrast and brightness on a TV, these controls are sent directly to the camera.
Centroid - When you draw a rectangle around a bright object in the Live display area, two crossed lines represent the centroid of the rectangle (ROI). The rectangle will move with the centroid to keep it in the middle. This way it will track the bright spot anywhere on the image. The centroid is used by the shift and combine algorithm to determine how much to shift the image.
Histogram - Displays a histogram of the image in the Live tab. It uses a monochrome converted image, which is an average of the RGB of each pixel.
Stretch Controls - Sliders below the histogram control the stretch of the image. The top one is black, and the bottom one is white. Numbers below the sliders are the stretch values. The left one is black the right one is white.
LOG Checkbox - This makes the histogram response log.
ROI Checkbox - Makes a histogram in the region of interest (ROI) of the red rectangle in the Live display area drawn by the user.
Magic Eye Focus - Displays a graphical representation of the focus. The two orange triangles grow together to indicate better focus. The red lines indicate the maximum obtained.
Avg Checkbox - Will average the last five focus values to smooth out noise in the image.
Reset - Will reset red max indicators of the Magic Eye Focus tool.
Start - This will start co-adding images and continuously display the current image in the Live tab and the co-added image in a new tab with the filename as the tab. The Min Quality, Evaluation Count, Object Name, and filter selection will be used for this image. The start button will be relabeled "Stop." When Stop is pressed the co-added image will be saved as the file type selected and in the "Image Folder" under the Object Name. If there is already a file with this name then a number will be suffixed to the name.
Min Quality - Selects the minimum acceptable quality for co-added an image.
Evaluation Count - This is the number of images skipped after Start is pressed to determine a quality range.
Object Name - The filename that will be used when the Stop button is pressed.
Kernel Filter - This will insert the selected kernel filter in the image stream. It's only applied once to any co-added image.
Images Status - Displays the number of co added images.
Quality Status - Displays the quality of the last camera image.
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