30 replies to this topic

[PeterLaubscher]

Many thanks, everyone for your feedback. Now I really have cold feet I'll start saving towards a proper monochrome camera - thanks for all the advice, it has made for very interesting reading.

[calypsob]

Back in 2016 a camera called the ASI 1600 was introduced and it flipped CCD on its head, really hard. From as far back as I started astro imaging in 2011, CCD and DSLR was the only option, DSLR used a cmos sensor but it was not cooled and very noisy. A CCD by comparison was available in mono but I cannot remember a single model selling for under $3500. 

 

During this era there were a select few individuals ballsy enough to attempt removal of the bayer matrix array on osc cameras. One company even made a cooled mono option, central ds. What sinteresting is back then, especially with Canons, the data was truly raw and un tampered with. I still find myself in awe of images taken by the 6D the first Mk1 version.  I owned a mono 60d which Brent Oliver modded of Hypercam and mods. A wooden chopstick or toothpick was used to scrape away the bayer matrix and the left over gold film was polished. If you severed a single microscopic wire at the edge of the sensor, the camera was bricked. Here is an old video of this process https://www.youtube....h?v=WYNytUsBFVg

 

With my mono 60d, although it lost some qe by having no microlensing, it was awesome to be able to shoot 5nm Ha and Oiii. I had alot of fun with that camera. Processing was tricky but once you understood the routine, it could be done easily in pixinisght. And for a while there was no mono aps-c at 18mp in existence. Now we have the imx571mm which is on a different plateau. 

 

Maybe 20 years from now the young generations will look back in awe of the cyberpunk like efforts people went through to acquire astro data. Assuming the sky is still useable, maybe by then lights will be so smart you see the milkyway from the city. 

Edited by calypsob, 11 June 2025 - 07:27 PM.

[PeterLaubscher]

Many thanks, Calypsob - that is so interesting - I have heard of people polishing the top layer of the sensor wtih ?cerium oxide or ?iron oxide, presumably to achieve a similar result. I'm old enough [70] to remember the time that if you wanted to get into astronomy, you had to grind and polish your own mirror. I still have the mirror I made as a child - aged nine or ten, I think. And yes, we have come a very long way. I often about how astro imaging might evolve.

[calypsob]

Many thanks, Calypsob - that is so interesting - I have heard of people polishing the top layer of the sensor wtih ?cerium oxide or ?iron oxide, presumably to achieve a similar result. I'm old enough [70] to remember the time that if you wanted to get into astronomy, you had to grind and polish your own mirror. I still have the mirror I made as a child - aged nine or ten, I think. And yes, we have come a very long way. I often about how astro imaging might evolve.

Yes I used to hear stories about film and manual eyepiece autoguiding

[xonefs]

Yes I used to hear stories about film and manual eyepiece autoguiding

Some of us still shoot on film too, but I'll pass on the eyepiece guiding

[whwang]

I did eyepiece manual guiding from 1990, until about 2011. Before 2009, I still did some film imaging, and the exposure time per shot can be as long as 2hr. That means continuously staring at the eyepiece (and keeping a distance between my eye and eyepiece within an inch) for two hours. And depending on the telescope pointing direction, I may have to sit, stand, or even crouch for two hours. Later I switched to DSLR, but in the first year (or two) I still manually guided, and dithered the DSLR exposures manually through the eyepiece. It was a fun time that I will never want to go back.