Bert's comment, and I quote.
"It is still crap if you have to use elaborate methods to get a final image"
....apart from precipitating my previous post, also made me realize there was indeed merit in an image processing comp at the SPSS (well done Monte and crew!).
The SPSS sample data not withstanding
...... data can be excellent, but is plagued by a rough exterior that needs to be gently peeled away to reveal the true beauty beneath.
Hubble CCD datasets are a good example.
The RAW frames are (almost) tragic. Noise and Cosmic rays abound. Fortunately, the seeing, focus and tracking are literally diffraction limited....and any noise can be removed completely once its nature is well understood (even spherical error
)
To avoid all this noisy grief, why did NASA choose not to fly a CMOS device?
They wanted maximum QE, resolution and dynamic range.
Elaborate methods are indeed used for Hubble Heritage images, but last time I checked it was a Fairchild back illuminated CCD in low earth orbit in preference to a Canon CMOS.