Imaging at 35°C: when a cooled astrophotography camera is worth the money
On a June night in Nicosia, ambient 30°C at 11 pm with no breeze, I ran a 40-minute stack on the eastern Veil Nebula with the Seestar S50. The final image looked passable at full zoom-out. At 100% crop the background was peppered with hot pixels, and the faintest filaments had disappeared into a warm, grainy haze that no processing could salvage. The same target in March, with nighttime temps around 14°C, had noticeably more contrast in those faint regions. Same scope. Same integration time. Same processing. The only variable was temperature. ...