Some of you may have wondered why you didn't see anything in Reinhard's galleries similar to the old, but spectacular contrast-enhanced pictures of ionized gas nebulae, but with digital technology? Back in the 80ies I was using the filter technique highlighting deep-red hydrogen nebulae on special B&W film. But the obvious obstacle for monochrome digital photography is the fact that all of the sensors in conventional digital cameras are equiped with an RGB filter mask in front of the pixels essential to capture the colour information. Using a deep-red filter transparent only to the H-α light from ionzed hydrogen would allow only one-forth of the pixels to capture light. That wouldn't make sense.

In 2023 I finally made the next step in the advancement of my astroimaging passion. I bought a monochrome camera specialized on astrophotographic applications. The camera not only has no colour filter mask in front of the sensor, it can be cooled to more than 40°C below ambient temperature dramatically reducing the noise in the pictures.