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The reason we need to take longer exposures is to get enough signal to overwhelm the readout noise in a camera. At the moment, this can require 10-15 minutes exposure. However there is some interesting developments with L3CCD technology in which readout noise has effectively been reduced to 0. At that point there is no reason to take subs any longer than a fraction of a second.
Once we get cameras like this the only real requirement will be that the mount can carry the weight. Even AO might become redundant.
Terry
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