More than half a night of clear, great seeing sky popped out between the monsoon clouds this week, so I decided to add a Messier object to my collection. I was very pleased with the quality of the image given 3 hours of subs. Seeing was fantastic during the first half of the night.
This is my first image to use the Optec Flatman XL2 (Alnitak) panel to acquire flats. You might remember that my Diffraction Limited AC4040 Camera sensor has some RBI, and the best methods I have found to produce RBI free images are to take low intensity flats (about 1/8 full well) at higher sensor temperatures (15C). Higher temperatures mean RBI dissipates faster and low intensity keeps charge traps from filling. The technique led to noisy flats when sky flats were used. The Flatman panel allows me to accumulate significantly more flats and raise the SNR above the image SNR and thus eliminate flats, in theory, as a source of noise.
Thank you
@Howard Trottier for the lead on the Flatman and I hope your Panel is giving results. I intend to do a temperature study to quantify my RBI so I can optimize flats with a little more precision.
Arizona Astrophotographers...Is the end of Arizona cloudy monsoon season in sight? Maybe next week???
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