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I put enough words in there that hopefully something is useful to ya

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Extremely useful. Your comments on the inexpensive starshoot were just the kind of reality check I was looking for. That _sold me_ on the concept of the ST2000 variant, but, as always, I continued to do some research on the subject, and I stumbled across this:-

http://www.stargazer-observatory.com/reportsCCD-h16-engl.htm

Scroll down the page till you see the dark frame comparisons of various cameras. That's a _huge_ eye opener, and it got me hunting farther. I found 4 or 5 more places on the net with similar comparisons, one _very_ enlightening, it compared a brand x camera to the brand S camera, giving the brand S a huge advantage, cooling to -25 while brand x was only cooled to -10. The 10 minute darks from that exercise were more than _a little_ enlightening. Chris has done similar wandering around the web on this subject, and now 'she who must be constrained' has turned into 'she who must be obeyed' I have been forbidden from purchasing the brand S camera in any of it's variants. So, the research continues, I'm actually making up a list of candidate cameras in a spreadsheet, where we are starting to track all the details on each of them. WOW, there's soo many out there when you really start digging into it, and the feature sets vary a LOT. I've also learned from my digging so far, pay very close attention to the overall field of view, and, consider vignetting in the process. It's not good enough to just get the target in field, we need to get comparison stars in field too, and, that compounds the problem a bit in some cases.

Another lesson we learned the hard way last summer. I got new equipment just days before we left on a 2 week trip to a couple star party events. I had a LOT of trouble over those two weeks with the new equipment, and, it essentially wrote off most of the week sitting atop Mt Kobau under pretty darn decent skies. That's not going to happen this year, our summer vacation consists of a week at the saskatchewan summer star party, and from there we head directly to Mt Kobau for a week at that event. Gotta love it when one event is timed for the week leading into the new moon, and the second one is timed for the week leading out of the new moon. We dont want to be fighting with non functional equipment during that trip, so, purchase of new camera will likely be postponed till we get back from Mt Kobau.

In the meantime, gathering up more information from other threads in the forum, I found a fabulous link at the AAVSO that allows one to search for variables with conditions. Found what amounts to the ideal setup for doing shots with the dsi-pro we already have, and, gonna use that setup to get a head start on procedures. I dont expect to get accurate millimag photometry results from the dsi-pro, but, we can sure figure out the process and get to the point we have useable results, albeit on larger swings, using this camera. Figuring out the software process from start to finish is also a non trivial exercise, so, part of the 'research' phase now includes using the dsi-pro to get a light curve on a fast variable, and, confirm all the software steps along the way. No point trying to go after millimag stuff with spendy new equipment, if we haven't figured out how to generate light curves on something that varies considerably more, with the dsi-pro.

So, we are all set to go now, with the 'hands on' part of the exercise. Got the dsi-pro lined up and ready, got a candidate variable in a good location lined up and ready, that particular variable gives us a full mag swing over 6 hours, and it's got 25 comparisons in the same field. If we cant get a good light curve from that setup using the dsi, then we better re-visit our process _before_ we charge off and spend the bucks on more fancy equipment.

There's no point getting _to excited_ just quite yet, we still only get 1 hour of actual dark each night, but, in another couple of weeks we'll start having long enough dark nights to actually produce useful / useable data in long enough sequences to attempt plotting curves. Funny enough, that co-incides with the first big star party of the season around here, and, I've even managed to co-erce somebody into loaning me a star analyzer 100 for a few hours on one evening for that event.

the ducks are lining up, it's shaping up to be a fun summer...

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