Photographic Enhancement of Hα Films

The appearance of Tech Pan film in sizes that were useful in large Schmidt telescopes immediately offered new opportunities and advantages to users of Schmidt telescopes. Among the advantages were a spatial resolution that was well matched to the image quality produced by the optics of the telescope under the best conditions. For the first time such images were well sampled on Schmidt telescopes. Tech Pan was initially formulated by Eastman Kodak as a 35 mm solar patrol film designed to have enhanced sensitivity around the 656.2 nm Hα line. It is this feature, combined with the excellent imaging characteristics, that we seek to exploit with the new UK Schmidt Telescope (UKST) Hα survey. This paper briefly reports some preliminary comparative tests of Tech Pan with the new Hα filter at UKST and suggests ways in which data from the new survey can be quickly exploited using advanced photographic techniques such as photographic amplification. This simple contact copying process rapidly reveals extended low surface brightness features that simple inspection cannot.