I'm new in CCD imaging and the purpose of this section is not to give a general tutorial for imaging with the DSI, but provide you with a description of how I use this CCD camera with my setup. For more information about the DSI see the section "related links" at the bottom of this page.

The Meade Deep Sky Imager is a low cost CCD camera from Meade company. This camera is part of a package with a software , called Autostarsuite and some accessories, ready to produce black & white or color pictures. With a configuration such as mine it is recommended to add a focal reducer between the telescope and the CCD camera. This configuration offers a large field of view to shop deep sky objects.
We can understand below why this accessory is so important.
Why is it necessary to use a FR with the Meade f/3.3 ?
In fact, there are two main reasons to use it:
- First of all with a schmidt-cassegrain telescope at f/10, the field of view displayed through the camera is too small to imaging deep sky objects like nebulas or galaxies. Thanks to the FR, the focal of the telescope will be reduced from f/10 to F/6.93, F/5.23 or F/3.52 depending on how the T-SCT adapter is used.
- Secondly, the fast f/ratios that are produced with the FR greatly reduce exposure times as well as guiding requirement of the telescope's tracking during exposure. In short, the less the focal ratio is the less your time to imaging will be. Imaging with short exposure time becomes possible with a telescope in Alt/Az alignment.