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Re: [APML] Tech Pan - the facts??? - star sizes



Roland;
    I think I know where you are going with this, but I can't give you very accurate numbers. My 180mm f2.8 gives sharper stars than the Schmidt, as I have painstakingly focused it for Hydrogen-alpha light only, and it is less affected by bad seeing and guiding errors. (I manually guide!) With the 180mm images on tech pan I took a 1200 dpi scan (optical, not enhanced) of a print enlarged about 10x. This gives approx 12,000 dpi at the film plane, or 2 microns/pixel. My sharpest stars on tech-pan have most light in a 5x5 square (10 microns), with most of the light spread of the star contained in a 12x12 grid. This is really tough to measure though, due to halation. The Schmidt is about 25-40% bigger on rare shots where the seeing was good. I don't think 6.8 micron pixels is overkill for a tech pan replacement with short FL, fast focal ratio optics - especially if they are precision focused for one colour. 24 micron pixels will give square stars. Or am I talking out of my touque? (toque in the US?)
 
John  Mirtle
Calgary, Ab. Canada
 
 
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2002 7:18 PM
Subject: Re: [APML] Tech Pan - the facts???

In a message dated 1/15/2002 6:04:02 PM Pacific Standard Time, jmirtle@shaw.ca writes:


I am also relieved that I am not the only who can't cough up the cash to
pick up a 3K by 4K 6.8um pixel CCD - the MINIMUM I would consider to do the job


Even if you could, there's no way you'll be able to bend the CCD chip to fit the field curvature of your Schmidt. Face it, if you're going to stick with a Schmidt, you'll never get a CCD. Better invest in lotsa film.

P.S what kinda star sizes do you get with that Schmidt on TP? (don't say 2 microns!).

Roland Christen