Last night was First Light with the MC SRDS16C--a remarkable, 16 megapixel CMOS color camera which eliminates the Bayer Matrix and combines high sensitivity with low noise.
My first, out-of-the-box dark field tests showed virtually no noise on 30-second integrations at maximum gain. Lengthening the integration to 1 minute showed a speckling of color noise. The biggest difference between this camera and my others is that even on a 2-minute integration, there is no amp glow! This is remarkable and greatly simplifies long exposures and multiple-exposure stacks that tend to enhance amp glow, even when corrections like DFC are applied unless great care is taken with dark field capture settings.
The images below are significantly "down-rezzed" as the actual images captured are in the 30 to 40Mb range. These were captured with my MC f/4 Newt under almost full moon conditions last night with no filtration. This is a great combination of scope and camera! As you can see, the result is a wide field with minimum vignetting and superb imaging capabilities. I can't wait to try it on more challenging--and more colorful--objects!
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| The Double Cluster (stack of 3x20-second integrations) |
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| M31 (stack of 2x20-second integrations) |
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| Deneb--the Very First Light Image (1 x 250ms integration) |
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