On Sat, 22 Oct 2005 02:26:33 -0400, Rich wrote:

Probably high five-figures. But fear not;
This will be available as a "modestly price"
digital back for medium format cameras.
http://www.kodak.com/eknec/documents..._sensor_hr.jpg

It will be interesting to read more about this. Since their target
market is digital photography, I would assume the sensor is color, which
makes it pretty useless for astroimaging. But Kodak usually makes B&W
versions of their sensors available (at considerably higher cost), and
that may be the case with this sensor.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if a "modestly priced" medium format
digital back using this sensor is pushing five figures.

Astronomically, a sensor like this is useful only to a limited number of
imagers- those interested in critical resolution imaging of very large
fields (several square degrees). Doing this requires very high end
optics (not many scopes can provide 33x44mm flat focal planes, or take
advantage of 6.8um pixels). Readout time will be around a minute, and a
typical image will require at least a few hundred MB of storage with
just a few subframes. Color imagers will be looking at around 1GB of
storage. Processing calibration frames may require a 64-bit operating
system!

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com