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Old 22-10-2013, 08:05 AM
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avandonk
avandonk

avandonk is offline
 
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Melbourne
Posts: 4,786
Starizona have a quick guide on optimum exposure for any CCD system.

Here

http://starizona.com/acb/ccd/advtheoryexp.aspx

They have an ideal exposure calculator here

http://starizona.com/acb/ccd/calc_ideal.aspx

All you need to input is your camera and sky background for a given exposure.

It is also worthwhile if you want to get into the mathematics to have a read of the info on Stan Moore's and John Smith's sites.

Stan Moore here
http://www.stanmooreastro.com/

John Smith here

http://www.hiddenloft.com/notes.htm

and here

http://www.hiddenloft.com/notes/acq.htm


The basic take home message is to take 2N+1 exposures that are half or a third of the exposure needed for sky background to overwhelm read noise.

With 3nm narrow band this of course allows for very long exposures. Then the inherent camera thermal and random noise become a problem. That is why a faster optic is preferable.

Bert

Last edited by avandonk; 22-10-2013 at 08:27 AM.
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