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Originally Posted by CoolhandJo
Great shot. Galaxies everywhere! Showcase image!
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Thanks for that. It always amazes me how many galaxies there are in the backgrounds of these images.
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Originally Posted by Doomsayer
Getting FLI to put a 6303 chip in your Microline camera would be an obvious solution - the best QE in the medium-large sized class of chips without going to the back thinned ones. Not a cheap chip to buy in class 1 I'd imagine. The 6303 is pretty noisy and would greatly benefit from the superb cooling of the microline - this would be infinitely superior to the 8300 with the CDK if you can stand the blooming. I find the blooming in my 6303 nearly always manageable - except if you go for fields with very bright stars of course. There are also impressive deep wide field NB pics taken with 6303s and FSQs such as my namesake, Neil Fleming. So the 6303 is quite versatile - as is of coure the 'legendary' ST10.
It will be interesting to see how your new reducer goes - hopefully it preserves your current illumination and flat field.
Forgive me if I'm stating the obvious... 
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The 6303 sounds good. As far as noisy goes how do you mean? I am not to concerned about noise especially if it were in a FLI body. Although an STL6303 would be nice with an AO unit for this focal length. Just to get that bit extra resolution. Or perhaps a microline and an SX AO unit.
Yes I hope the reducer works well too. It does have specs about spots sizes at various spacings so it should not be much of a risk.
But 17 inches at F4.45 and a high QE camera well matched to the focal length perhaps with an AO unit could be a pretty amazing setup. The 16803 for wider fields and something better suited than the 8300 for galaxies etc.
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Originally Posted by renormalised
Speaking of the chip/pixel combo you're looking for, why not try something like an Alta U42. 13.5micron pixels, bit over 4MP on chip, full well of 100K and it's back illuminated so it's a good deal more sensitive. Chip's about 0.6 x the size of the 16803, so your vignetting mightn't be so bad.
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Not a bad idea. I know Peter Ward had one of those and I believe they are quite hard to flat field as they have uneven surfaces and uneven illumination due to the back thinning process.
Wolfgang Promper recently posted some images using one of these high QE back illuminated chips that was quite good. Its not a bad idea.
The 8300 is a good chip its just that its better suited to shorter focal length refractors and shorter exposure times. Mind you on bright objects its pretty awesome on the CDK17 as well. I took an image of the Hourglass Nebula with it and it was the best I have done of that area. No colour yet but I should finish that image, it was very very promising.
Greg.