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Old 20-04-2007, 09:52 AM
jase (Jason)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ambermile View Post
I'm pretty sure you will find that the reason CMOS is a *bad thing* astro-wise is nothing to do with sensitivity but rather has a whole lot to do with noise.

Arthur
Not wanting to change the purpose of this thread, but I disagree with your comment Arthur.

"each pixel on a CMOS sensor has several transistors located next to it, the light sensitivity of a CMOS chip tends to be lower. Many of the photons hitting the chip hit the transistors instead of the photodiode."
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/question362.htm

This implies that you need longer exposure times to compensate for the lack of sensitivity, this in turn increases the noise (as you mentioned). Both noise and sensitivity can be controlled through cooling and pixel binning respectively.
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