Seth asked,

Have any of you folks any recommendations you'd care to share regarding the best way to get a video feed (preferably color) off of a 1.25" eyepiece?

As to video capture, Bruce Grimm is the person I have most noticed at SLAS star parties doing live video presentation. I have not used a true video camera with an image intensifier - which I understand can compensate for the inherently low quality of video capture. My own primitive experiments use: 1) A Celestron LPI Or subsitute a Meade DSI or an LPI and flip the Envisage Live preview window into "full-screen" mode. 2) Laptop 3) AVerMedia AVerKey iMicro PC/Mac-to-TV Converter http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?pfp=cat3&product_code=50180... The AverMedia convertor has zoom and pan adjustment on the top of the convertor box. This allows you to zoom and crop astronomical software screens seen on the laptop screen, so only the astronomical object projects on the TV. 4) Output via a presentation projector or portable TV using S-video In general, the live image results are not that good because video capture at 30 frames-per-second (fps) is inherently of a lower quality than stacking individual images captured with a CCD. Within the last month, lunar imagers - who use avi captures with Registax to create high-quality lunar images - have been raving about the new "The Imaging Source" second generation FireWire camera featured on the inside cover page of December's Sky & Telescope. I have not seen or used one of these units. The specs appear to be far superior to LPI or video cameras. The camera does not have some of the inherent limiting magnitude constraints in traditional video CMOS chips. It also pumps images at a very high 60 frames-per-second, reportedly with good image quality. Those specs should up the quality of the image considerably when used in a live mode. Lunar images typically take 1200-2400 frames and then stack the 30 or 40 captured when the air is still (e.g. lucky imaging). So, my only partially informed suggestion is to look at the Imaging Source camera as a possible evolutoinary technical improvement over video capture. I am assuming that your end-use intent is to capture live planetary video for presentation at school or planetarium star parties. If you are looking at (a) live web broadcasting or (b) still-image web broadcasting, but that's another topic separate from live portable TV projection. Regards - Kurt _______________________________________________ Sent via CSolutions - http://www.csolutions.net