Although the CCD camera and the software do not have the same importance as the telescope, some of their features have to be carefully examined.

Size of the pixels: as in high resolution the F/D ratios are very high, it is always necessary to use amplification systems to reach the large focal lengths required. Therefore the size of the pixels has absolutely no importance, since the amplification coefficient can be adjusted as desired to obtain any sampling (see The sampling).

Number of pixels: at a given sampling, the field of the CCD image depends directly on the number of pixels of the CCD detector. Therefore a large number of pixels is best for the Moon (in despite of increased readout time...and high prices !), but for the planets it has no importance.

Pixels capacity: a high capacity of the pixel (in electrons) helps in obtaining a good signal to noise ratio in a single image (but at the price of an a longer exposure time).

Quantum efficiency and spectral sensitivity: the highest quantum efficiency is better, in the aim of decreasing exposure times. For the same reason, a good sensitivity in blue is needed for color imaging of the planets.

Readout noise: since noise is dominated by photon noise in planetary or lunar imaging, it is not necessary to have a very low readout noise.

Coolling system: since exposure times are short, it is not compulsory to have a very efficient coolling system: generally the dark correction is not necessary, and, even if it is necessary, thermal noise is negligible.

A/D converter: with a detector (like the KAF-0400) whose pixels have a low capacity in electrons, a 16-bit converter is not necessary. 14, 12 or even 10 bits are sufficient, since, with 16 bits, several bits are lost in the noise.

Shutter: if the camera has an built-in shutter, it must be as smooth as possible because even a imperceptible movement of the telescope can severely degrade the result in high resolution The best is a frame transfer CCD, but unfortulately only small detectors work in this mode.

Fan: fans must be avoided, since they can generate unacceptable vibrations for high resolution imaging.

Connection with the computer : the readout time mainly depends on the type of connection between the camera and the computer: a plug-in specific card is faster than a parallel port, and a parallel port is faster than a serial port. Having the shortest readout time is important in the aim of obtaining the largest amount of images.

It should be user-friendly and, above all, should be able to acquire and save images with as few operations as possible, specially without having to click on many menus. For planetary imaging, the intensity of the highest level pixel must be displayed automatically, to avoid any risk of saturation. A half-frame mode (see Technical information) is extremely useful for the planets. Any focusing help is also very useful, since focusing is one of the most difficult tasks in CCD imaging.

The processing software can be different from the acquisition software, since the FITS standard format allows to transfer an image between them. It must be able to register planetary (or deep-sky) images with a precision of a fraction of a pixel and to composite them with different algorithms (median sum, sigma-clipping sum, etc...). On the other hand, it is not necessary to have gadgets like dozens of high-pass filters or restoration functions, since the experience shows that unsharp masking has a very good efficiency (see what is the function of the image processing ?).