Observations using the ETX-70

Instrument	ETX-70 (350mm, f/5.0), Baader IR filter
Camera	ToUCam pro PCVC-740 SC1 LX
Data acquisition	K3CCDTools
Registration & Stacking	RegiStax 2, IRIS or K3CCDTools
additional Postprocessing	RegiStax 2 & IrfanView

Images were taken with 10sec exposures at an amplification level of about 75%. Why having the amplifier on anyway, and why at a high level like this? Good question, hopefully a good answer would read like this: It's stars I was trying to record. Objects which send out light, compared to the background. Neither colour nor internal structure matters, in faint levels of grey only lightish spots could make the astronomer happy... The only thing remaining that really matters appears to be the SNR (signal to noise ratio) of the recorded data. Amplifiers create random noise which can be averaged out with sufficient statistics (all over principle of the whole registration business). In other words, why not using the maximum sensible sensitivity of the camera and using the benefits of statistics to reduce noise. This is what happend the following recordings....
BTW some were processed wirh dark-frame substraction, resulting in dark "stratches" on the images. When the telescope does not perfectly track, it appears to be more clever to just let statistics take out hot pixels.
Whilst writing this info, the sky presented some more stars, giving the perfect reason to stop here in order to take some more data.

More recent images (pics on the lower end of this page) were taken unsing the "non-raw" (see link) patch in order to reduce color-conversion artefacts.