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Three faces of Comet Linear
Comet Linear A2 6-27-01
Van Cittert Deconvolution of the Lunar Highlands
More Northern Lights and the ISS over Payson
The NGC891 Galaxy Group Notes
CCD Shots during Full Moon
Comet Linear July 19 & 25th, 2000
Latest image of Comet Linear S4
Spectacular Red Aurora over Payson Arizona
Fuji's New Formulation of it new Super HQ100
FIRST TESTS OF HYPERED FUJI HQ100
First Schmidt shots with PJ400
First Tricolor shots with 2415
Test Images with Fuji NPH400
First Two Comets with the new CCD Camera

The spectral curve for this film first whetted my interest when I first saw it on Fujis Professional web site. The BIG peak at around 650nm puts it right square into the Hydrogen Alpha line, and we went to work right away hypering the film and testing it on a few key astronomical objects seen below. The sky in Arizona has been quite cloudy lately, but one long night of shooting was sufficient to characterize the film initially.

Summary: The film is very fast when hypered, has extremely high contrast for a color film, very fine grained, the films high green sensitivity lessens the blood red colors of nebula to more of a pink color, but is killer on galaxies.

Spectral Response Curve. The all important H-alpha line is key here, nearly centered on the component. While OIII performance is relatively poor, a huge hump in the green can pick up mercury vapor lines perfectly in manmade sky fog. Performance on galaxies and reflection nebula bears out its superior curve for these objects.

The most natural test object, the Great Orion Nebula shows the main response on red objects. This is a mere 20 minute exposure on hypered NPH400, with a 10" f/6 Newtonian. The contrast is strikingly evident, it has about three times the contrast of Kodak Pro400PPF in side by side negatives with the same instrument! The grain was also finer by a considerable margin, and another comparison revealed a 4x speed increase or more when hypered for 12 hours at 50C.

On deep red and very faint objects, the films performance was less impressive than PPF, but only slightly so. This is 2 thirty minute exposures stacked digitally of NGC2174 in Orion. Same 10" f/6 scope. Note the grayish nebulosites in the field. PPF is always totally red, with no color differentiation. The extreme contrast of this film is very evident in these shots by the very strong vignette in the corners from my T ring. Not even PPF has this much contrast. Normally, only tech pan shows this effect, which has a gamma of 4...

Single 30 minute shot with the 10 inch of M46 in Puppis. A few yellow stars can be seen, and of course NGC2438 the enclosed planetary nebula.

Extreme enlargement of above frame to show fineness of grain. It is very smooth an not clumpy like PPF. Six or seven stars can be seen inside the nebula.

NGC2903 in Leo, inclined spiral galaxy. This is a 2x enlargement from the original frame, which was made from two 30 minute exposures that were multiplied digitally from the 10" f/6. A yellowish nucleus and baby blue arms make this film a winner for galaxies.

These are my first experiments with this film, please let me know what you think!

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