Differential Flexure…my story

For years now I have been taking long exposure LIGHT frames. 500 second exposures at ISO200 was my goto setting for my Nikon D5300. With my QHY294C I have been using 600 seconds at GAIN=1600 for narrowband LIGHT frames and 200-300 seconds for broadband (LPR filter) LIGHT frames.  I have been resisting buying an off-axis guider while focusing my attention on better guiding and a software based differential flexure compensation scheme. I hope to create a post detailing my work on improving my guiding.  This post is going to focus…

Read Noise and Dark Current Using CaLIGHTs v3.1.6

I am going to build on my last post “Counting Electrons with CaLIGHT v3.1.6” where I demonstrated how you can evaluate your astrophotos at the electron level. Read Noise Here I have gone ahead and called up a BIAS frame for my QHY294C using a GAIN=1600. This is a 1/10000th second exposure. I am not using any master frames here…no masterDARK or masterBIAS. I am also not using the Noise Filter, Bad Pixel Filter or Row Noise Filter. I chose a very large area for calculating statistics because I am…

Counting Electrons with CaLIGHTs v3.1.6

Starting with CaLIGHTs V3.1.6 it is now possible to select a custom output pedestal value. This creates an interesting opportunity to study your astrophotos at the electron level. You can now determine how many electrons have been collected at any given location in your astrophoto. You can also evaluate how much the CaLIGHTs noise filter can dramatically improve your astrophotos. One piece of information you need to determine is the system gain of your camera. The system gain tells you how to convert the pixels values into electrons. This can…

All about master Files video playlist

I just finished creating a new playlist containing several videos discussing master files. Learn more about taking quality master FLATs.  Take a deep dive into what master BIAS and DARKs can tell you about your camera.  I had to break up the video dealing with master BIAS and DARK frames into six parts…too much to discuss.  I also present my results from evaluating DARK current in four different cameras. Nikon D5300, Canon 750D, QHY294C and ASI2600MC Pro.Peterhttps://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKWSWyofP8UR8ogS5pK-jnOlbyRrgomRA

D5300 vs QHY294C Elephant’s Trunk

One of my best astrophotos with my Nikon D5300 was of the Elephant’s Trunk Nebula. I didn’t use any filters and I found that the small details were very interesting to study. All of the major details in the Elephant’s trunk are present in both images. The L-eNhance filter seems to bring out even more interesting details. As the Elephant’s trunk stretches upwards you can see that the D5300 image without filters grows vague. The QHY294C+L-eNhance filter image maintains it’s details much further up the Elephant’s trunk. The stars were…