I apologize if this has been asked before, but I haven't found a discussion on it, and am not quite sure what to search for to find the subject anyway.
I'm a but confused about creation of master dark frames and dark scaling. I have been using Pixinsight for a year or so now, and have always tried to match dark sub times and temperatures with the light frames I am processing to create a unique Master Dark frame for each project. To accommodate this I have accumulated nearly 1500 dark frames of various durations from 30 seconds to 20 minutes, and temperatures ranging from 25F to 80F. My camera is an uncooled, modified. Canon T3, which means the sensor temperature depends on ambient temperature. Because of the time required to create 20 minute dark sub frames at a given temperature I often only have 10 or 15 dark subs, and sometimes less, that match the temperature of my light frames for a given subject. I've read that you should have 50 or more dark subs to create a good master dark frame, but it is difficult to do with limited time and ambient temperatures to work with. With so few dark subs I question whether it is worth the trouble.
My question is whether I need all of these dark sub frames? With Pixinsight's scaling ability, can I integrate all of the dark subs into one dark sub and let Pixinsight scale it, or alternatively can I integrate all of the subs of a given duration or temperature to make a few master dark frames and let Pixinsight scale those.
Thanks in advance,
Jim
