Author Topic: Dark Optimization Questions  (Read 2101 times)

Offline jfrech14

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  • PhD student in Imaging Science at RIT
Dark Optimization Questions
« on: 2015 February 15 14:59:20 »
Hey there!

When I enable dark optimization I usually am getting a K between .05 and .4 but every now and then I get one that comes up with a dark compatibility error and has a K=0. However, it says that all were calibrated successfully. Should I throw away this flat frame (I have 49 others but still, every one counts). Is K additive? It seems like it would be muliplicative which means the lower K the less it is applying the dark and a K of 0 would be bad. I am just wondering how K is factored in there. I assume that if it says no correlation then it would just abort optimization and use the dark frame as it is?

Also, when I look at the fits header it says bias calibration enabled: yes, bias calibration: no. Does this mean that it is only dark subtracting my flat frames and not bias subtracting even though I have both enabled?

Thank!
Josh Frechem

Offline jfrech14

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  • PhD student in Imaging Science at RIT
Re: Dark Optimization Questions
« Reply #1 on: 2015 February 15 15:26:08 »
Oh and I wanted to add that I take individual darks for each flat frame. I make master darks using no normalization or rejection and then using the histogram get rid of the pedestal. Then I do the same to the bias frames. Then I load up the individual flats into image calibration, check bias subtraction, check dark subtraction with opimization and then press apply and every now and then it comes up with the correlation error.
It could be because my QHY9 is notorious for straying regulated temperature up to 1 whole degree C? I know there is a parameter in optimization that has to do with temperature and that may be the cause of it. They were set to -40 and some of the images made it up to -39.
Flats and corresponding darks are 7s for L, 17s for R, 15s for G and 32s for B. ( regulation won't really let me get darker so that I can get my L flats over 7 seconds but that should be enough to handle the shutter issue. Plus my Ha darks already have to be 400s! :P