stars identified

I did some superimposition and blinking with Fireworks to identify stars in the M42 image. Labelled many of the stars. Noted the magnitudes (from SkyTools) for the fainter ones in parentheses.



Now I know that I definitely pushed down to mag 14 and change.

So, it's obviously true. Using a CCD camera (with integration) is like dramatically increasing the aperture of your telescope. My career magnitude limit in the city with the SCT 8" is 11.90—visual. With the StellaCam³, I'm able to get 2.5 magnitudes deeper.