Here in Las Vegas, at a special press briefing just prior to the beginning of CES 2008, Celestron was showing off two digital microscopes -- one that comes in the more traditional microscope form factor and another that's a handheld unit. At $129, the latter targets consumers while, at $299, the former also is for consumers but could work well in some scientific settings and classrooms. This post includes still images and video.

The more traditional microscope of the two (pictured left and seen in the video) -- the LCD Digital Microscope -- has a small LCD display mounted on top that shows the content of the slide that's sitting on the microscope's stage. The benefit of such an LCD is that it makes it a lot easier for more than one person to view the content at a time (whether it's a few scientists or a bunch of kids). I've seen this sort of technology at work before, where a microscope outputs its image to a computer's display. But the difference here is that no computer is required and the LCD can take both still images and video of the content below with its 2 megapixel sensor.

The LCD part of the microscope has 128 Mbytes of built-in memory for storing images and video that can be taken with a press of a button. And if that’s not enough, it also has an SD slot for expanding the memory with an SD card. Unloading the memory into a PC involves a basic USB cable (although this device would be perfect for an implementation of wireless USB which also is being demonstrated here at CES). According to company spokesperson William Ostedt (interviewed in the video), the LCD Digital Microscope won't be available until March.

Also shown in the video is Celestron's Handheld Digital Microscope (pictured below). As can be seen in the image, the handheld unit illuminates whatever objects are underneath it (in this case, a dollar bill) and then, via USB cable, transmits that image to a PC. Special software is needed for a Windows PC to see the images. Just after we stopped video taping the interview of company spokesperson William Ostedt, he told me that no software is required for it to work on the Mac (though that wasn't by design). For some reason, he said, it just works.

Like the LCD microscope (Web page here), the handheld unit (available now) can take still images with the press of a button. But it cannot do video. But we can, and here's the video of our interview: