Dave - thanks for the pointers - I should have been more clear myself when I was talking about the noise characteristics of the 600D.
I'm trying to get to a workflow that will give me half-decent results. A few bias frames, a decent handful of darks, and a decent handful of flats. Once those are collected in each session I should be bettere able to work with the good data I hopefully collect.
Ireland really isn't the best place to work with astronomy stuff but I'll happily plod along slowly until I get the time and weather to do a better job
Nice capture Cathal. As mentoned , a few flats would get rid of the vignetting. What I tend to do is just before it gets dark, point the scope and camera (focused) at the sky, set the camera to Av and take about 10 snaps. Only takes a minute and they work pretty well as flats.
The Lord giveth, the Revenue taketh away. (John 1:16)
What I tend to do is just before it gets dark, point the scope and camera (focused) at the sky, set the camera to Av and take about 10 snaps. Only takes a minute and they work pretty well as flats.
Hi John , I assume that you take these flats in RAW mode and also at the ISO you intend on shooting at?
What I tend to do is just before it gets dark, point the scope and camera (focused) at the sky, set the camera to Av and take about 10 snaps. Only takes a minute and they work pretty well as flats.
Hi John , I assume that you take these flats in RAW mode and also at the ISO you intend on shooting at?
Keith.
I take raws for flats and usually keep the iso conditions the same. I'm not sure this is critical for flats though . Darks yes, but the focus point and set up should be identical for flats
The Lord giveth, the Revenue taketh away. (John 1:16)
For bias, the ISO and conditions don't matter. For flats they sort of don't matter but don't use ISO 1600 flats at ISO 400 for example. However if you have a setup that you take down and setup every night then you probably have to take flats every night too. Everytime you move things around you will end up with dust bunnies coming and going and also even the tiniest rotation of the camera WRT the orientation when the flats were taken will mean that the dust bunnies move WRT the flats. John's suggestion of taking sky flats is good, but the reality is its rarely that clear at dusk here in Ireland. A home made flat box is a great asset and there are lots of plans on the net.
Its well worth coming up with a printed checklist that you can use to walk you through your chosen workflow. Its too easy to forget something.
  