Home > Consumer Reviews > Celestron NexImage Solar System Imager

I used the NexImager with my Celestron 130 SLT. It was very good for moon viewing but it struggled a bit with the planets. For example, I found that viewing Saturn through a normal eyepiece produced a better and sharper image than using the NexImage. Also the CCD resolution of 640x480 is low in this day when megapixel CCD's are commonplace even in low price cameras. My unit also produced a fair amount of noise when viewing a dark sky.

But it is fun to play with and given it's low price, it is worth having.

A more expensive and useful add-on would be to make it wireless to avoid the cable that runs from the telescope to your PC.

As a side note, I'm using the NexImage with a Macintosh Macbook laptop. Though the software is written for a PC, I am using it fine via VMWare Fusion hosting a Windows XP OS.

I have found the Celestron NexImage to be a low cost and successful addition to my astrography collection of cameras. The CCD chip is very sensitive and even with my smaller 70mm Meade ETZX you can see Saturn's rings very clearly.

This does not ship with drivers for Windows Vista, and Celestron are not planning on releasing any. However if you login to Yahoo user groups and search for the Neximage group, there is a folder in the files section called 'Neximage vista' which provides drivers for Windows Vista which worked great for me.

Also the magnification that you get from the Neximage is the same as what you would get from using a 5mm eyepiece on your telescope, so the length of your telescope divided by 5.

Installing the software was a piece of cake, using it is quite another matter. The basic introductory instructions are easy enough but after that it seems to require a PhD in mathematic astrophysics to get round all the available toggles, tweaks and options. First attempts? The moon came out real nice, but Saturn was a white blob with no fine detail. Nothing like type of pics that the super-whizzkids proudly display on the Celestron site. Will go back to night school and one day you might see my fine efforts published as well
(oh - was using it on a classic LX200 in good see'ing conditions - sorry Celestron!)

This camera is not compatible with Windows Vista 64 bit operating system. If you're running 32 bit Vista you're fine except you have to download and install the new driver. I'll gladly sell you mine. It's never been used.