Stellar photography seems like a wonderous thing: you and a loved one on a starry night taking beautiful images of the heavens — before making out. Unfortunately, anyone who has tried it knows it’s more often a frustrating exercise of fiddling with exposure and aperture settings on your SLR while it hangs precariously off the side of your telescope, held in place only by a flimsy adapter ring. The Imaging Source has a simpler option, a series of digital cameras designed for slotting into your scope like an eye piece, capturing the night sky at up to 60-minute exposures over USB or FireWire. The range starts at $390 for a monochromatic VGA model, going all the way up to $870 for color and 1280 x 960 resolution. Not cheap, but it’s probably a lot less than you paid for the equatorial mount on your new reflector.

[Via Picture Snob; thanks Jay]