Crossroads

Hello, I am looking to upgrade my camera for astrophotography. So here is the deal. I am using a Celestron Ultima 8, It is used on a pier in my back yard, which is about 30 feet from my house. Currently, I am using a Meade DSI color (the first version), powered by a (rather long in the tooth) 3 year old Dell laptop. I have a Dell desktop which is much more powerfull that I do image processing with. I want to move up, but I am having trouble making up my mind between a DSLR, or a dedicated AstroCCD unit (SBIG etc).
I am getting tired ( with a touch of arthritis)of lugging out the Dell laptop with the associated accessories, and want to move up in the quality of the images I am getting.So I am wondering if a DSLR will be a good upgrade from the DSI,or would I be better off rolling with a dedicated CCD Astro cam (SBIG etc) wich would likely mean getting a new laptop as well. I always like to stay in a reasonable budget (the only >NEW< item I have bought so far for this hobby is the camera and the laptop).If it helps I am primarily intersted in deep sky stuff. 8) I appreciate an input y'all have to offer.

Tony,

There is not much difference in the laptop requirements between the DSI and that class, DSLR, and CCD imaging. They all run on fairly minimal computers. (Actually, the Autostar Suite is one of the more demanding on computer resources from my experience.)

The difference between DSLR and CCD is shrinking, but it remains, and probably always will be so. THe big question is how good do you want to get? Being cooled, the CCD will be better than the DSLR in perhaps the most critical of issues on highest quality imaging--the signal to noise ratio.

However, the CCD is a much more demanding camera. It has a steeper learning curve. It takes more processing, but gives you much more control over the image (control=processing time in this case).

The DSLR, on the other hand, offers a large one-shot color image that can be hard to distinguish for 95 per cent of the people in the world from a true cooled CCD production.

So, ultimately if you want to take great photographs after you have learned the whole system, you will need a ccd. However, if you want to take very, very, very good photographs soon, go with the DSLR. And, DSLR's can be used during the days.

By the way--there will be different opinions on this. And it is not as simple as I suggest--For instance, the one-shot-color CCD is relatively simple (although not as powerful as the combined production of a monochrome/filtered ccd.

Alex