I have had the unique opportunity to be able to compare two great, low-cost color cameras specifically designed for astronomy! The Adirondack Video Astronomy (AVA) "Planetcam" ($495.00) and the Internet Telescope Exchange (ITE) "Color-Eye" ($495.00) share many similarities but do have their strong points when compared to each other. So many subtle differences in fact, that I hope I don't confuse you too badly when trying to explain them!

I tried both cameras on Jupiter, Saturn, the Moon, M42, and M35. I tested extensively on Jupiter and Saturn and fed images via videocamera (Canon Elura2 MC) to my computer and processed them for further evaluation. Here is a quick look at what these cameras can and cannot do.

The advantage of both these color cameras is the ability to accurately display, on a monitor, sharp color pictures of the planets, the Moon, and the properly filtered Sun to anyone who wants to view them. Imagine holding a star party, and displaying Saturn on a big TV screen, pointing out the Cassini division and other markings on the disk. All that is required is a "video in" on the television or VCR, and a regular 110 volt a/c outlet. Just pop the unit into your scope with the supplied C-1.25" adapter, focus, and voila!, your done. Just two wires, no muss-no fuss. However, to zoom in on the planets, intelligent use of barlows will allow you to optimize magnification. Depending on how "fast" your scope is, using prime focus (no barlow), you can reach down to 8, 9 10th magnitude stars, allowing you to show brightest star clusters, and resolve double stars. In general, the bigger and faster the scope, the better.

Out of the box, the fully automatic ITE Color-Eye was a bit more sensitive and could image stars that were a bit dimmer than the AVA Planet-Cam. In general, it's dynamic range seemed broader. However, the Planet-Cam has manual adjustments (gain and color balance, sharpness, negative, and shutter speed) that came in handy in the very few situations  that the color-eye could not keep up with the brightness variations (Jupiter in a 14.5" when not "zoomed in on" overexposed) On the other hand, the moon did better on the Color - Eye which was able to stop down the brightness in a 6" f/8 refractor better than the Planetcam at prime focus. I am still double checking that with the various controls.  Easiest to access on the "Planet-Cam" were contrast, gain, color balance, and sharpness... all easy controls to change in-session on the Planet-Cam, but mysteriously, the Color Eye seemed to usually automatically adjust all of the above just fine on it's own. I do very much like to have the ability to "hands-on" adjust these parameters however, and that is the advantage of the AVA Planetcam.

Color saturation was somewhat better on the AVA Planet-Cam, but utilizing only a 1/4" chip, the field of view on the Color Eye was noticeably larger which uses a 1/3" chip. That means though that more barlowing is required to increase the image scale for planetary work, which makes it easier to reach high power in the Planet-Cam, but easier to use a broader field in the Color-Eye.  In other words.. the Color-Eye is a bit more suited to bright star clusters, while the planet-cam is targeted almost solely at solar system objects.

As I mentioned, I chose to use an off the shelf videocamera to download my images to and then get them over to computer using a "firewire" cable. Other people have downloaded images directly to their computer using special video capture boards, etc. You can also take them off of videotape to computer using a video capture board, or a "snappy".  With my technique, the color did not port over to the computer all that well, losing some of it's range and saturation. I understand it's even worse with the snappy.  In addition, I definitely noted more noise than my cooled Starlight Xpress MX5c ccd camera, which also does a noticeably better job at still-imaging in general. However, using my technique, I could "pick out" the best frames very easily by going through the tape frame by frame.

While some great results can be achieved in still-imaging, the greatest advantage of both these videocameras is their ability to show off the universe on TV. The real-time capture is very attractive, and better than other hybrid models such as SBIGs wonderful "STV" (which I also had on hand) which is basically an excellent  ccd imager and autoguider that has video output, but is not true streaming video like these two cameras, not to mention these offer color. Brightest objects have the least noise level, so the moon is absolutely incredible in both cameras, and I understand they both do a bang-up job on sunspots as well. Planets did best when skies were steady in the big scope (14.5") When I turn the gain down on the Planet-Cam in fact, while on Jupiter in the big scope, there is a very low noise level.

As for double stars, they aren't quite as "pretty" as looking at them in the telescope, but they do show up well, and star clusters are visible, but not nearly as attractive as through the scope directly, plus the limited field of view is a pain. I would say that the best planet will be high-surface brightness Mars which will look good in just about any scope. Jupiter does show off it's red spot, and yes, it's reddish (actually orange).. and other micro-features can be easily picked out on the television monitor without any additional enhancement. The eye integrates many images at a time, so that the noise level is reduced, and is only a serious limitation on captured stills.  Serious Jovian work can be done with these units, I picked out almost as much detail without any sharpening routines than I have after sharpening my Starlght Xpress ccd images.

Overall I highly recommend either of these color astro cameras, especially if you have a crowd to please. In fact, I'm running with my latest tape right now to check it on a high quality TV monitor to see what I may have missed while I was taping earlier this morning! Exciting indeed.

Todd Gross
9/29/00 and 10/13/00