S&T test report
Meades Pictor 208XT and 216XT
Dont be fooled by the remarkably low price; these new CCD cameras from
Meade are packed with exciting features.
T
hey just might be the best
deal ever for amateur astron-
omers getting started in the
world of digital imaging.
Meades new Pictor 208XT and 216XT
CCD cameras offer high-quality construc-
tion, advanced operating software, and
remarkably attractive prices. They certainly
rank among the best dollar values ever
offered in the growing market of com-
mercial CCD cameras.
Calling these cameras new seems un-
usual since advertisements for the Pictor
208 and 216 have appeared in this maga-
zine since mid-1994. But according to
Meades chief engineer, Ron Ezra, todays
cameras have undergone significant revi-
sions from the early models. This is one
of the reasons XT was added to the
name. The operating software has also
evolved substantially. The cameras re-
viewed here were manufactured early
this year and were tested with version 6.2
of the PictorView XT operating software.
The 208XT and 216XT are physically
identical. Both cameras, which
also double as autoguiders,
By Dennis di Cicco
Test Report: CCD Cameras
Meade Pictor 208XT
8-bit imaging camera and autoguider
Meade Pictor 216XT
16-bit imaging camera and autoguider
Meade Instruments Corporation
(through its dealer network)
Suggested U.S. mail-order price
208XT: $495; 216XT: $695
Outwardly identical, the Pictor 208XT
and 216XT are self-contained units ex-
cept for a small box incorporated in the
power cord. For imaging, a single wire con-
nects the camera to any computer running Win-
dows 3.1 or higher. Photos by Chuck Baker.
use the Texas Instruments TC-255 chip.
The array of 336-by-244 10-micron-square
pixels has a slightly smaller active imag-
ing area measuring 3.2 by 2.4 millimeters.
Because the TC-255 is a frame-transfer
chip with separate imaging and storage
areas, it is capable of making very short
exposures without a mechanical shutter.
The software allows exposures as brief as
0.004 second.
Both cameras are powered by 12 volts
DC and draw a maximum of 1 ampere
of current. My tests were all done using
the optional Meade AC adapter that
plugs into a standard 110-volt wall
outlet. Both cameras have regulated
thermoelectric cooling, which can
chill the CCD to approximately 25
Celsius below the ambient air tem-
perature and maintain it to within
1 C. Because regulated cooling re-
duces the need to take frequent
dark frames (required for process-
ing images) while observing, more
time can be spent imaging the sky.
This sophisticated cooling system is one
of the features that help set the Meade
cameras apart from other low-cost units.
1997 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
The main difference between the cam-
eras is the number of brightness levels
they record. The 208XT is an 8-bit unit,
which produces images with a maximum
256 shades of gray. The 216XT, on the
other hand, is a 16-bit camera yielding
images with 65,536 gray levels. As such,
the 216XT is more desirable for serious
imaging of faint deep-sky objects,
though the 208XT does a very credible
job, especially on bright objects.
Meade describes the 208XT as a
black-and-white imager only, while the
216XT can be coupled with Meades
model 616A filter wheel to produce tri-
color images. Although I did not test this
feature, the software commands for ob-
taining the individual exposures through
red, green, and blue filters and assem-
bling a tricolor view look sophisticated
but easy to use.
The Hardware
Except for a small box about the size of a
deck of playing cards integrated into the
power cord, all electronics are contained
within the CCD head. Each camera is 4
inches (10 centimeters) in diameter and
Sky & Telescope September 1997 49
 Using a Meade 16-inch LX200 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope at about f/6, the author made 3-minute exposures of the famous Ring Nebula,
M57, in Lyra with the Pictor 208XT (left) and 216XT (right) cameras. Although the 16-bit images from the 216XT are better for recording subtle
brightness differences of deep-sky objects, the 8-bit 208XT does a very respectable job with bright objects like M57.

2 inches (5 cm) thick and weighs 18 ory address and hardware-interrupt (IRQ) for an image binned 22. Switching to
ounces (510 grams). The active imaging status. This is done with a pair of mouse the 216XT required about 75 and 30 sec-
area is centrally located on the cameras clicks, but hunting down the correct set- onds, respectively.
face and positioned a few millimeters tings can be time consuming. In most
back from the front surface, behind an cases Com 2 uses memory address 02F8 Under the Stars
antireflection-coated window. The chip and IRQ 3. Ask anyone who has used a CCD camera
is also centered within a female T-thread The maximum communication speed what challenged them most on their first
mount, so the camera attaches to any between the camera and computer is night observing, and youll likely hear
telescope adapter having male T threads. 56,000 bits per second. Unless you have stories about focusing. Getting sharp im-
The cameras come with an adapter for special software drivers for your serial ages on a CCD chip takes a bit of time
standard 114-inch eyepiece holders. There ports, this speed is available only with and practice. But good focus is critical
is no power switch, so the cameras come Windows 95 or when running Windows for obtaining maximum performance.
to life as soon as the power cord is con- 3.1 in standard, rather than enhanced, The Meade cameras include several
nected to a 12-volt supply. They connect mode. Slower communication rates work hardware and software features that
to a computers serial port with a stand- fine but at the expense of significantly greatly simplify focusing. Unfortunately,
ard 9-pin female computer plug. increasing the time it takes to download the one that helps most with focusing the
PictorView XT runs under Windows 3.1 an image. These times also vary depend- camera the first time is explained poorly
and up but is recommended for Windows ing on the camera settings. For example, in the manual. Proving the old adage that
95. My tests were performed with an with the laptop computer (which operat- one picture is worth a thousand words,
aging 33-megahertz desktop PC with a ed at the cameras maximum communi- the photograph on page 51 shows what
486 processor running Windows 3.1 and a cation speed), the 208XT took 25 sec- the manual attempts to explain only with
100-MHz 486 laptop loaded with Win- onds to display a full-resolution image words. Using a piece of frosted tape such
dows 95. In both cases the software instal- after the exposure ended and 12 seconds as Scotch Magic Tape as a focusing
lation was flawless and screen and a spacer sup-
took only minutes. plied with the camera, you
The softwares default can easily set the tele-
settings have the camera scopes focus to the ap-
connected to the comput- proximate position of the
ers Com 1 serial port. chip before the camera is
This was the case with my attached. The process takes
laptop, and the system just a few minutes and can
worked perfectly. The work with daylight scenes
desktop machine, howev- as well as the Moon, plan-
er, had a mouse attached ets, and brighter stars.
to Com 1, so the camera The next step is to re-
was connected to Com 2. fine the focus while view-
In addition to specifying ing images. The relatively
this port in the softwares After the PictorView XT camera-control software has been loaded, several val- slow download times for
user preferences, I also ues must be set in this User Preferences dialog box. Some of the information is these cameras make the
had to set the ports mem- recorded in the file header with each image. process a bit tedious, but

50 September 1997 Sky & Telescope 1997 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
FPO CHUCK BAKER

Although not well explained in the users guide,

its easy to make a device for rough focusing
the Pictor cameras with the 114-inch adapter, a
supplied spacer (arrowed), and a strip of frost-
ed tape. It works like the ground-glass focusing
screen on large-format photographic cameras.

the software includes a nice feature that I

found very helpful. During focusing, the
two most recent images are displayed si-
multaneously. Its easy to compare the
views to see if adjustments are moving in
the right direction.
Once the camera is accurately focused, Advertisement
you can make a special tool using your
own eyepiece and a locking ring supplied
with the camera. Simply remove the
camera from the telescopes focuser and
insert an eyepiece, sliding it in and out
until it is in sharp focus. This position is
marked with the locking ring. On a later
date the eyepiece is simply inserted into
a focuser until it comes to rest against
the ring, and the telescope is focused
until the view is sharp. When the camera
is switched for the eyepiece it will require
only minor tweaks to achieve optimum
focus on the CCD.
These focusing eyepieces are also great
for centering objects on the CCD. My in-
troduction to digital cameras came in 1990
with CCDs about the same size as the
Meade units reviewed here. At that time I
found the challenges of locating and cen-
tering faint objects on such small detec-
tors quite daunting. Perhaps experience
has made the work easier, but there are
also accessories, such as flip-mirror units,
that simplify working with small chips.
I found the PictorView XT operating
software a pleasure to use. One particu-
larly nice feature is a list of 16 predefined
exposure settings that can be selected
with a single mouse click. Each can be

1997 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved. Sky & Telescope September 1997 51
 The only image processing done on this one-
minute exposure of the globular star cluster
M13 with the Pictor 216XT and 16-inch tele-
scope working at about f/6 was the subtraction
of a dark frame.

customized and saved. I had one setup

optimized for focusing on the Moon and
another for focusing on stars. I also
made several settings for snapshots of
faint objects, which were helpful when
locating and centering deep-sky targets.
There is a feature for taking a series of
Advertisement exposures that are automatically regis-
tered and added together. For example,
six 30-second exposures of a galaxy can
be automatically added together to pro-
duce an image nearly as good as one
made with a single, 3-minute-long expo-
sure. In the case of telescope drives with
minimal periodic error, this feature can
virtually eliminate the need for guiding.
While an exposure is in progress there
is a large countdown display on the com-
puter monitor. It is easily read from 10
feet away even on a small laptop screen
and is ideal for observers doing manual
guiding at the telescope who want to
know at a glance how much time re-
mains before the exposure ends.
Another feature of the software I par-
ticularly liked allowed evaluating the in-
formation contained in a raw image of
deep-sky objects with only three mouse
clicks. When the image is displayed I
clicked the Histogram button, which
plots a graph of pixel brightnesses. Expe-
rienced CCDers can assess image data
from this graph alone, but with two more
mouse clicks PictorView XT will display
the image using a histogram-equalization
algorithm. This tells at a glance the range
of information recorded between the
brightest and darkest pixels in the image.

52 September 1997 Sky & Telescope 1997 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
 The default format for saving 208XT
and 216XT images is FITS, which stands
for Flexible Image Transport System
the most widely accepted standard for as-
tronomical images. Files can also be saved
in a variety of other formats including
Tagged Image File Format (TIFF), bitmap
(BMP), and Joint Photographic Experts
Group (JPEG). JPEG is acceptable for
images to be viewed rather than analyzed
for scientific content, since JPEG is a
compressed format that loses varying
amounts of the original image data de-
pending on the amount of compression.
With PictorView XT, however, there is no
provision for specifying the level of com-
pression. It appears to be set rather high
since some images showed visible degra-
dation after being saved in JPEG format.
By the way, nothing prevents the same
image from being saved in many differ-
ent formats, and for this reason I always
saved the original as a FITS file.
In addition to the basic image-calibra-
tion procedures that are expected of any
CCD camera operating system, Pic-
torView XT offers some advanced fea-
tures. There are several image-sharpening
routines. For image calibration there is a
nice method for subtracting a dark frame
that was made at a different temperature
or has a different exposure duration than
the image frame. The software has a
great routine for blink-comparing two
images the technique many observers
use to discover comets, asteroids, super-
novae, and variable stars.
Some camera features work exclusively
with Meade LX200 telescopes. For exam-
ple, you can automatically take a mosaic
of images to be assembled later into a
single view. Using these features requires
that the telescope and camera have sepa-
rate links to the computer. This necessi-
This dialog box shows the many exposure options. Sixteen set- dates are never more 216XT. I cant help but think that these
ups can be saved for recall with a single mouse click, thus elimi- than an Internet connec- cameras will get a lot of people started in
nating hassles when taking routine exposures.
tates a second available
comm port, which neither
my laptop nor desktop
computer had.
It would take many
nights to just try all the
functions possible with
the software, let alone de-
scribe them in this article.
Nevertheless, I did find
several bugs that only
occurred when working
with images from the
208XT. The dialog box for
adding images together
lists six different options,
including averaging the
pixel values of two im- With the Pictor 208XT attached to a 5-inch f/10 Celestron
ages. Neither the printed Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope, the author made this 0.01-sec-
manual nor the softwares ond exposure of the Moons terminator near the large crater
online help section ex- Clavius on June 28th. Lunar imaging with focal ratios faster
plained how these func- than f/5 usually requires filters to prevent overexposure.
tions work. The Median
Combine Images option is obviously a Autoguiding
variation of Average Images, but what I experimented briefly with the auto-
does OR Images mean? More important, guiding capability of the 208XT and
however, was the fact that every option 216XT. In the stand-alone mode, which
except the straightforward add images requires no computer, the cameras ap-
command caused the computers to crash pear to operate exactly like the 201XT re-
when applied to 8-bit images. viewed by Alan Dyer last month (page
Another obvious bug involved manu- 51). Since the 208XT and 216XT have
ally setting the pixel values that are to cooled chips, which produce less elec-
appear as black and grayscale in a dis- tronic noise than the uncooled CCD in
played image (the background and range the 201XT, they should be able to guide
values). Invoking this fundamental oper- on fainter stars. I did not, however, make
ation from the dialog box caused the a side-by-side comparison.
computers to crash. Fortunately, these Unlike the 201XT, these cameras can
display parameters can also be adjusted also be used as autoguiders when con-
by pressing the arrow keys on the com- nected to a computer. This offers features
puter. Since this method is interactive, not available in the stand-alone mode.
with the image changing as the keys are The most noteworthy is the ability to se-
pressed, it is actually a much easier and lect the object within the CCDs field to
better way to make these adjustments. guide on (in stand-alone mode the
Experience has shown that most CCD- guider simply selects the brightest object
camera manufacturers in the field, which may not be the best
quickly resolve software choice if there are two objects of nearly
bugs, and the ones equal brightness).
mentioned here may Both the 208XT and 216XT represent
have been fixed in the an amazing dollar value when you com-
update that was pend- pare camera quality, software features,
ing when this review and base price to other units available
was written. Meade today. The 8-bit 208XT is a fine autogu-
maintains a site on the ider and a relatively inexpensive way to
World Wide Web (http:// get started in CCD imaging. If, however,
www.meade.com/) where you want to pursue faint deep-sky ob-
the latest version of Pic- jects or try your hand at tricolor imag-
torView XT is available ing, then I would strongly recommend
for downloading, so up- spending the extra money for the 16-bit
tion away. world of CCD astronomy.
1997 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved. Sky & Telescope September 1997 53