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From our extremely dark and transparent site up at Happy Jack, Arizona, we did dome initial testing of this new potentially useful astronomically film, bought from Adorama with mixed results. The automated robotic camera was set up at 9pm, and let run until 3am. A wide angle swath of the Milkyway with the 16mm Zenitar fisheye lens set at f/3.5 was recorded, and here I am summarizing the first results. The film was professionally processed to simulate what the average skyshooter would get.

- The film is fast and grainy, with fairly low reciprocity failure

- It is very red sensitive, easily recording faint gaseous nebula as a somewhat unnatural reddish orange color.

- Backgrounds were somewhat greenish in cast, but easily corrected

- The Milky Way recorded as a strongly orange tint, the brighter the star fields, the deeper orange the stars.

- Nearly NO blue was recorded, the film is very nearly blind to blue nebulosity.

We have a dozen more rolls in the fridge, and more tests are planned with longer telephotos and prime focus imagery.

Instrument:  Zenitar 16mm f/2.8 fisheye on Pentax K1000
Platform:  Aurora Cam on tripod
Film:  Konica Cent. 400
Exposure:  5 mins
Filters:  NONE
Location:  Happy Jack, Arizona
Elevation:  6800 ft.
Sky:  Seeing 8/10, Transparency 8/10
Outside Temperature:  15 C
Processing: Photoshop.

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