Backside illuminated CCDs, chips flexed to the focal plane, tens of megapixels, active optics, HDR raw.

Backside illuminated CCDs, chips flexed to the focal plane, tens of megapixels, active optics, HDR raw. Photography consumers today are getting what astronomers had 15 years ago. But man, it’s so much easier now with storage that can actually hold that much data! 🙂

In 1999, I spent 5 days at at telescope in Arizona with a new 64mpixel camera and came back with a suitcase packed with ~25 DLT IV tape cartridges. I could only fit about 2% of those raw images on my hard drive at a time.