NexImage USER’S MANUAL Model #93708, #93711 # 95518, #95519 ENGLISH
Congratulations on your purchase of the Celestron NexImage Solar System imaging camera. Your NexImage camera comes with the following: + NexImage Camera + 1.25” nose piece + CD including NexImage iCap and RegiStax processing software + USB Cable Fig 1 NexImage Camera 1.25” Nose Piece USB Cable Recommended Minimum System requirements: + Pentium IV, 2.0 GHz, 1GB RAM + Graphics card with 24 or 32 bit + Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 (32 & 64 bit) + DirectX 9.
Quick Start 1. Place the CD into your computer’s CD-ROM drive. 2. Install both the NexImage iCap and RegiStax software onto your computer. 3. Thread the 1.25” nose piece into the body of the NexImage camera. See Fig 2. 4. Slide the 1.25” nose piece of the camera into the eyepiece barrel of your telescope. See Fig 3. Fig 2 5. Plug the small end of the USB cable into the port on the back of the camera. 6. Plug the other end of the USB cable into a USB port on your computer.
Capturing Images 1. Double-click the NexImage iCap icon on your computer’s desktop to start the program. See Fig 4. Fig 4 2. If the NexImage camera is not already detected, select the camera and press OK. See Fig 5. 3. Select an easy target like the Moon to begin with. Center and focus your telescope on the specific feature you wish to image. 4. You should be able to see light displayed in the Preview window of the iCap software. Fig 5 5.
6. Use the Gain (A) and Exposure (B) settings to make sure that the image is not underexposed or overexposed . 7. S elect the video format (C). For the highest resolution, select 1280x960. Fig 7 8. Select the frames per second (FPS) for your video. The FPS box (D) will always display the maximum frames per second for the selected resolution setting. 9. Press the Video File button (E) to bring up the Recording Setting box. See Fig 7 & 8.
10. Press the Video File (E) to select the destination location for your video. 11. Click on the Advanced tab. You can either select the amount of time or number of frames you wish to record. See Fig 9. 12. Press the Record button (F) when ready to begin recording video. See Fig 10. 13. Once recording is complete, press the check video button (G) to view the capture image. Fig 9 F G Fig 10 See the Help file (H) to learn more about the advanced features of iCap software.
Processing Images 1. Double-click the RegiStax icon on your computer’s desktop to start the program. See Fig 11. 2. Press the Select button (A) and select the video that was just recorded. See Fig 12. 3. Press the Set Alignment Points button (B) to have RegiStax automatically select the alignment positions over your image. Fig 11 4. Press the Align button (C) to begin the alignment process. 5.
6. You will automatically advance to the Stack screen. Accept the default settings and press the Stack button (F). See Fig 13. F G Fig 13 H 7. N ext, move to the wavelet processing screen by clicking on the Wavelet tab (G). See Fig 14. 8. On the wavelet page, use the wavelet-sliders (H) to enhance the image. The power of RegiStax lies in the Wavelets settings. This is a special filtering technique that is very good for enhancing details in images.
To explore the many other features of RegiStax and view helpful tutorials, visit the RegiStax homepage at: http://www.astronomie.be/registax/index.html How NexImage Works NexImage uses a light-sensitive imaging sensor to capture streaming video of any Solar System object.
Focusing Tips To achieve best focus, concentrate on a high contrast feature of the object you are imaging. Focusing on small features such as a moon’s shadow on Jupiter or Cassini’s division in the rings of Saturn will guarantee best focus across the entire image. Once the frames of your video are stacked, the overall brightness of the composite (stacked) image is usually brighter than its individual component frames.
Since the NexImage will combine as many sharp frames as possible to achieve one high-quality image, you don’t want to take so many images that you start to detect the rotation of the planet, especially on Jupiter which makes one complete rotation in under 10 hours! Individual frames of a high-resolution video can have large file sizes. Hundreds of these frames can quickly consume an entire hard drive. We recommend saving your video data onto a CD-ROM.
CELESTRON, LLC. 2835 Columbia Street Torrance, CA • 90503 U.S.A. Telephone: 800.421.9649 • www.celestron.com FCC Note: This equipment has been tested and found to comply with the limits for a Class B digital device, pursuant to part 15 of the FCC Rules. These limits are designed to provide reasonable protection against harmful interference in a residential installation.
