Hi,
Being a real "film guy" I thought it would be interesting for you to hear my impressions of the CCD camera I have on loan from SBIG...
Picture this first: Cold front has just cleared out... everything is dripping wet... 3/4 moon is lighting up the haze in the air (aka as major dew event) to the extent that all I can see is the Big Dipper and a few other bright stars... in the finder scope I can just see the triangle that defines where M-51 is... no sign of the galaxy.
The ST-10 takes a one minute exposure... one minute!
As in 60 seconds... to my utter surprise most of the galaxy is there... including some of the faint tendrils coming off the companion... it is very noisy from low S/N.
I took 3 - 10 minute shots with dark frames but no bias and no flat field just to see what it would record out of the haze... although there was information in the core when it was a native file, when I brought it over to PS as a Tiff file it got lost so the cores are all burned out.
The first image is the 60 second image, the second is the 3 - 10 minute shots run through PW and a little clean up because I didn't take a flat field. These are my first CCD images in many years so don't be too critical! : - ) What is amazing is the conditions under which they were taken... bright, hazy, moonlit night.
For what it's worth,
Tony