Paul Boltwood (How I Made An Image With A Limiting Magnitude Of 24.5) is an experienced amateur astronomer who likes the technical aspects of astronomy, and builds much of his own equipment and software. This has enabled him to do photometry of Blazars for professional astronomers, and make a time lapse movie showing the action of the jets and rotation of the nucleus of Comet Hyakutake. He has won the RASC's Chant medal, and this year, the Astronomical Society of the Pacific's Amateur Achievement Award.

Paul won the Sky and Telescope Deep-Field Challenge contest (May 1999 issue on page 126) with a 24.1 magnitude limit image. This talk will explain how that image was made and how the same data was later used to produce a 24.5 magnitude image. This gain of .4 magnitude was equivalent to increasing his 16-inch aperture telescope to 23 inches.

Paul will cover the basic principles of high signal to noise ratio imaging, the characteristics of the CCD camera that are important, details of the calibrations required, and the processing algorithm used.

This talk will assume that the audience has a basic understanding of CCD camera operation and image reduction. To get the most out of this talk you are encouraged to read the articles located at:
http://ottawa.rasc.ca/pictures/pboltwood/image_processing/i_process.html and
http://ottawa.rasc.ca/pictures/pboltwood/deep_field/challenge.html.