What does an ordinary day picture look like when using a DSLR modified for astronomy?

Question

Some folks get their Cameras modified to enhance certain frequencies of light from nebulae. Something about removing an infrared filter or something.

My question is, what do ordinary, daytime, terrestrial pictures look like when using these modified cameras? Could aberrations induced by these modified cameras be rectified by playing with photoshop (or other) tools?

Answer 1

Canon makes a DSLR that is already optimized for astronomy.  It has a cooled CCD for longer exposures, and some other features.  And, it's a great DSLR for daytime.  It isn't inferior to other DSLRs for day time use. It's at least similar in price to other DSLRs.

It turns out that you don't get red, green and blue at each pixel in a color camera.  Oh, you get RGB information at each pixel, but two of the colors are interpolated from nearby pixels that are that color.  You can do science with it, and you even get a little spectral information (red, green and blue) - but you really need to know which color is real data for each pixel.

I'd prefer having a dedicated camera for astrophotography.  Instead of a color camera, i'd want a black and white camera.  If i want color, i'll take three exposures with filters and combine them on my computer.  In fact, the three filters are likely to be oxygen 3, hydrogen alpha, and sulfer 2.  I've seen some awesome results with a high end 80mm refractor, the above filters, a superior tracking mount, with a 2nd scope used for tracking.  The HST has very little on this combination for nebulae images.  But whereas the HST was 2 billion dollars, this little setup can be had for about $9,000.

Me, i take my low end point and shoot digital camera - that i was gonna buy anyway, and hand hold it to my dob.  I've gotten good pictures of a comet, Venus, the Moon, Jupiter with it's moons,  and Saturn with it's rings.  They aren't spectacular, but they're not bad.  I call it shoe string astrophotography.  The fact that they're in color doesn't bother me.