Yes, FITS...
I am just having a heck of a time getting the noise to go away, and I think that my calibration sequence is making it worse. There are very consistent pixels that seem to be "locked on".
I am using an atik-420c, on an alt-az CPC mount, an 8" SCT at f/10. There might be focus issues, but I don't think that would impact what I am seeing here.
I didn't take flats last night (because I still don't know how), and I didn't take bias or darks, either- so I took those today with the same temperature setting
So I built a master bias:
o 100 x .001s bias images, lens cap on
o Average combination, No Normalization, weights=don't care
o rejection windsor sigma, no normalization (is that right?), sLow=4, sHigh=3
o Saved the file as atik420-MasterBias.fit
Then I Calibrated my darks with it:
o 20 x 60s frames, lens cap on
o Used the Master Bias file atik420-MasterBias.fit
o Output Pedestal = 0
o Note that the calibrated files were almost twice as big as the original- does that make sense?
Then I Integrated the 20 Darks:
o Average combination, No Normalization, weights=don't care
o rejection windsor sigma, no normalization (is that right?), sLow=4, sHigh=3
o Saved the file as atik420-MasterDark.fit
Now, with my new master dark and bias in hand, I took to the lights (remember, no flats)
To calibrate/debayer/align:
o 7 x 60s exposures (that was all that I could salvage)
o Used the Master Bias file atik420-MasterBias.fit
o Used the Master Dark file atik420-MasterDark.fit
o Batch Debayer (VNG/RGGB)
- note that batch seems to sometimes this ends up with seemingly empty files, and have to re-run it, like every other time
o Then I tried Star Alignment, which keeps failing
The Dark and Bias look OK to me, but I might be way off- they do seem to show the same problem areas/pixels as the lights. This is a new camera, and I have never done this before- do they look ok?
BUT My debayered original FITS look "better" than my calibrated ones (more uniform background- see the "noisy calibrated" image) (see the noisy-calibrated vs just-debayered).
I tried experimenting with various settings in the calibration of the light frames, including checking the "calibrate" boxes with the master bias and darks- that seemed to introduce less noise, but the hot-spots are still there.
These attachments are stretched, but not color linked, trying to convey what I am seeing.
