Hi Bill:

I read your piece and posts on using a webcam as a "DSC", and I think it is a spectacular idea that's ahead of it's time. However it seems as though things are catching up.

http://www.supercircuits.com/ where many get the low light security cameras being used by the folks over at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/QCUIAG/ have come out with a new camera. The PC164c. It's right on the home page with the quarter next to it. US$129, and is it ever _tiny_.

This little camera has been causing quite a little storm over at QCUIAG, even though it's limited to 1/60th of second. The occultation people are quite wild about it too.

Unmodified, and with just a 50mm f1.4 lens it's getting down to mag 8 or 9!! (It uses the Sony EXView technology -- same as the StarlightXpress MX7C -- which has increased sensitivity in IR)

If you combine this with one of those USB video dongles (tiny little things for about $50) and your software, well your idea doesn't look to far ahead of it's time anymore. There may be some loss in precision with the video conversion but it should be minimal.

Take a read of this thread:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/QCUIAG/message/14578

Here's the recent post about the camera, that made me think of your experiments:

"Barry, I like my PC164C camera on my NexStar 8 so much I have another
PC164C on order for use on my trailer mounted Newtonian beast. As is,
the PC164C makes a great real time CCD finder scope, magnitude 8-9
with a f1.4 50mm Olympus OM lens."

The main problem for these folks is the 1/60th second exposure doesn't allow deep sky work. But for your application, mag 9 in 1/60th of second means real time finding and positioning. Just what you're looking for.

And for lots more about the camera start reading the posts from December. Nothing much else was talked about that month as the race is on to see if it can be modified to take long exposures.

FYI