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Mike, Ill get it up within a week, but I want set up to be smick, so no rush.
Matt, well, expensive gear doesnt an expert make ;-) , ive got some catching up to do to get the max out of it.
I must confess, this set up is rather more than I would allow myself for personal use in the backyard. Its to be installed in a country dark site where I hope to sell remote imaging time on it.
No, I rarely go longer than 10mins (the ST8 has hi QE). Light pollution and tracking also becomes difficult longer than that (well, not with an ME ;-). Signal always grows faster than skyglow background, no matter how long the exposures, but its deminishing returns. Internal noise becomes a big problem past 10mins on a DSLR anyway. Stacking then becomes the way to improve signal, the more the better. So, no, generally a cooled CCD doesnt leave a DSLR "in the dust" (for brighter objects anyway), there are lots of amazing DSLR pics around where its hard to tell if it was taken with a CCD or DSLR.
Narrowband filters is where it gets to be fun, skyglow has far less effect, but youd really need to mod a DSLR to use them.
Some would disagree, but for pics taken with average gear, set up the best it can be, in polluted skies, the biggest image improvements comes from skills in and time with Photoshop CS2.
Cheers
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