Susquehanna Valley Amateur Astronomers

...located in the heart of central Pennsylvania

QuickCam Photos by Al Francis

The QuickCam by Connectix is an inexpensive digital camera used primarily for videoconferencing on the web. Al had a black and white version of this camera when he stumbled across the Lance Hill Observatory page. The LHO page contains some nice lunar shots taken with the QuickCam at prime focus through an 8" SCT. It also contains links to technical information concerning the dissasembly of a QuickCam and imaging techniques. If you own a QuickCam and are interested in trying this, it is highly recommend that you visit the Lance Hill Observatory page first.

WARNING, DISSAMBLING A QUICKCAM COULD RESULT IN PERMANENT DAMAGE TO YOUR CAMERA AND WILL VOID THE WARRANTY.

The fully assembled QuickCam. The cable attaches to a standard parallel port and with the supplied software, allows you to take still photos, make movies, and videoconference via web reflector sites.

Dissasembly reveals the circuit board which contains the CCD chip. This board fits nicely in a 2" eyepice adapter.

The camera attached to a 10½" Clark Refractor with Al at the controls. The planetary images were obtained with this telescope.

We have to blame the operator for the poor quality of the planetary images. We surely cannot fault the scope!

Jupiter

Saturn

The following two lunar images were taken with the QuickCam attached to Al's 8" f/6 reflector at prime focus.