Hello all,

I am thinking about getting into astro imaging, and
am wondering something...

The local club I belong to has an AISIG (Astro Imaging
Special Interest Group). The majority of the club members
that I have questioned about about getting started in
imaging use Digital SLRs, mostly acquired in the last
year or two. (In fact, only one member I have approached
has an ST-7, and that is a few years old).

These one-shot colour DSLRs are pretty popular, and
are obviously taking a *lot* of business away from
dedicated astro camera manufacturers such as SBIG
and Starlight-Xpress. The dedicated astro cameras
are *seemingly* much more expensive per newbie useful
chip unit area, even taking into account the greater
sensitivity of the dedicated CCD cameras, cooling
capabilities, etc.

Why should a newbie such as myself pay $6000 for a
dedicated 6-MegaPixel astro CCD, or $1300 for a
low-end 0.4-MegaPixel astro CCD, when $1400 can buy a
less sensitive, less specific, but perfectly adequate
large-format dual-purpose CMOS camera such as Hutech-
converted Digital Rebel?

Gregory