[pmrid (Peter)]

I had an opportunity at Astrofest this year to buy a cooled and spectrum enhanced 40D and have now had a night of clear skies and good seeing to try it out. The objects chosen are the Helix (NGC7293) and the Pinwheel (M33). Each object was taken with a plain-jane Bintel 8" newt and is a stack of 12x5 minute subs at an image scale of 1.17 asp. The cooler dropped the sensor to Delta minus 18 or 19 and since ambient sat around 8-10C most of the night, the result was fairly close to minus 9 or 10. Not too shoddy really. A bit more blue-response might have been nice - especially in the M33 shots. But overall, and for first outings, I thought these were fairly promising.

Peter