Eye of "i-CAN"
-- Mintron MTV-63V1N --
"Interactivity" with guest users is one of the main concepts of constellation camera "i-CAN", as with internet astronomical observatories. To provide improved interactivity, "i-CAN" built-in camera shall have video output and high-sensitivity, and hopefully produce colored images.
Cameras manufactured by Mintron meet our requirements. There are several types, but the model you can easily find in large electrical appliance shops is MTV-63V1N. In addition, Japanese manufacturer, Vixen, sells the similar type of camera (C004-3M).
This is the image of the sky around Cygnus and Lyra. In order to obtain the image, we first created a movie file of 25 Kbps rate, the same rate as a movie transmitted from "i-CAN". We played it with RealPlayer and captured the image from the movie. This means that you can receive the image of such high quality if connected to the Internet. The camera successfully captured the image of the Milky Way near the neck of Cygnus and North America Nebula near Deneb. even though the image is not so clear.
Unfortunately, the colors of stars cannot be clearly distinguished. We are going to capture the image of Rigel of Orion, Betelgeuse and Antares of Scorpius next time. We will continue the development of "i-CAN" with this promising camera, Mintron MTV-63V1N.