I'm glad you took the time to do this, Paul. Thanks for sharing it.
I think it's perfectly reasonable to assert that the AO set is the sharper of the two. To me, it's a considerable difference; more than just slight improvement, but I respect that others may see it differently.
I've wanted to do a similar comparison myself but my SXV-AO-LF is yet to come back from the UK and I feel that such a undertaking would be more successful on better optics than what I can offer at this time.
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I guess the point I am trying to make here is that even at modest guide rates the detail is sharper than traditional guiding. I don't think the AO works well in poor seeing though and that would seem to indicate that it does not cheat the seeing, so you need good seeing to get the best out of it.
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Although not completely airtight with respect to scientific testing methodologies (hah, not like I could do any better...), you've produced compelling evidence that there is an improvement in image quality with AO enabled.
The need for good seeing may at first seem illogical; one could argue that the improvements came from the seeing and not from the AO, a conclusion which I myself considered at one time. This isn't the case. Even on a high-end mount such as your own -- which I imagine is defect-free or close to it -- a properly configured AO unit should be able to achieve corrections which are both more responsive and more accurate than those of the mount, since we're talking actuator-mounted glass lens vs something much heavier and less agile. This is why the guide rates need only be modest.
You've obviously nailed down the other relevant guiding parameters too, because AO doesn't automatically work well just because of good seeing.
Is there any chance that you might consider doing an AO/non-AO set back-to-back on the same night? It'd be interesting to get an idea of exactly how much better AO is when differences in seeing are removed from the equation.
P.S. I was in Adelaide a couple of weeks ago and got a first hand look at how much better the skies are there compared to this miserable city! I can see how it is that you manage to get so much imaging done
