View Single Post
  #41  
Old 26-04-2010, 07:20 AM
Hagar (Doug)
Registered User

Hagar is offline
 
Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: Australia
Posts: 4,646
This is one of those discusions that will go round and round in circles for days and really achieve nothing. I am surprised the big boys haven't bought into this one yet with all the specs of mono cameras to justify the debate. Robins examples above are like my examples and Marcs, They really show nothing which can be considered conclusive. The images taken with the mono have a high screen stretch while the OSC have a medium screen stretch which does make them appear darker.
To carry out a test we really need two cameras with the same size CCD, same pixel size, same scope, same night and software and then we might be able to get something which is somewhat conclusive.

The question was asked about the ability of the OSC camera to perform and I think it has been demonstrated reasonably well. There is a few things which must be remembered about OSC cameras which is often overlooked in a discusion like this. The first is the two different sensors can only possibly collect the photons which happen to hit the CCD and in the case of a OSC camera software in the camera does some interpolation to fill all the pixels with a mix of the three different colours and with modern camera CCD's this is done quite effectively. The mono camera on the other hand fills the pixels with actual photons.
Colour cameras are not suitable for scientific work such as photometry for this very reason.

I think what has been demonstrated here certainly stands the OSC camera well for general imaging and for producing pretty pictures which is what most of us use a camera for.
It is a granted fact that the mono camera will be more accurate in it's depiction of an object but then we take the resultant images into photoshop or similar and often completely change the pixel values from those collected. Accuracy just fell out the door.
I think (Just my thoughts) both cameras have a place in astrophotography and in the hands of a skilled operator can produce quite comparable results. I don't believe the void between the mono and OSC is anything like as great as it is made out to be and at no point should the OSC be discounted because of sensitivity reasons as I (again just my thoughts)believe the cameras are quite comparable and in fact OSC cameras are very simple to use and convenient from a time point of view.
Reply With Quote