This page presents lunar and planetary photographs taken with a Meade ETX90, using a modified Quickcam Express Webcam and a 2x Barlow. Most of the images are single frame captures. Those made from stacked frames are so labeled.

These pictures are first time efforts with the Meade ETX, but give some illustration of what can be easily accomplished. Most were taken with my Quickcam Express Web Camera, and some with my newer Celestron NexImage web cam astrocamera. The moon images are not representative of the best the telescope can do, but are pretty close to that. The Jupiter photographs are not as good as I hoped, but again, near the best this scope can do, at least with the Quickcam.

Stacking planetary images would give far superior results, but on these first outings I didn't get enough images to do that. The Saturn photo was taken at prime focus because of the dimness of the planet, and then enlarged. To learn more about how stacking images can give better results, check out the Celestron NexImage review.

Though the pictures on this web page were taken with a modified webcam, they could have also been obtained with a digital camera mounted behind the eyepiece. With a digital camera, you don't need to haul a computer out to the telescope to control the camera. I've constructed a simple mount to hold my Fuji behind the eyepiece, and will soon be adding photographs taken with that method.