After spending the past year and a half fighting with the software (Astrovideo) for the SAC 8, I have broken down and changed directions. I purchased a used Canon 10D off of Ebay. With the introduction of the new Canon 20D, it appears that a number of photographers are upgrading to the new camera and disposing of their perfectly good 10D's at about half price.


The Canon is capable of some absolutely stunning deep-sky shots, and is supported by a very active Yahoo news group. Best of all, in a pinch, I really don't even have to use a computer to be able to image with the Canon 10D. I just need a couple of large CF memory cards and an extra camera battery, just in case. Naturally, since I got the camera, we have had only a few clear nights, and my schedule has been so packed that I have only managed to get out under the stars a few times. Other than the fact that the 10D takes gorgeous pictures, the most noticable difference between the 10D and the SAC8 is the size of the chip itself and therefore, the field of view you have to work with. The 10D appears to have a huge chip and probably a 500% larger field of view over the SAC8.


So far, I have only a few shots to share. To enable processing of shots taken in Alt/Az, I found a wonderful piece of software called Registar. With it, I am able to align my shots to enable stacking them to bring out features. The result is then processed using Paint Shop Pro. These are some the best shots I have ever gotten of a deep sky objects. Hope you like them.

Click thumbnail to see full size image

M2	M15	M27
M31	M42	New M42
M45	Empty	Moon