A new beta tester, have created a couple profiles and base sequences and 2 targets. In doing so, a few questions came up. One was planning flats. I have a Flip Flat and normally take flats at the end of a session.
With Robomanager I won’t be sure of what flats are needed though. Looking for suggestions.
Wayne
Hi Wayne,
only you know which flat you need. Usually my flat work for 6/8 months. So I take only one time.
But if you want you can take small number of flat for all filters each night with sky flat or with a panel.
All the best
Leonardo Orazi
Thanks Leo!
That’s probably the best idea - to just take 16 flats for each filter. My flats change more often - I think dust gets on the optics over time. I assume I’d just build a flat sequence to run after the Robomanager work finishes - or maybe better as the first activity every night after civil dark.
Do your flats not depend on camera rotation?
Wayne
I find I can recycle my refractors flats for months (As long as I do not remove the camera and introduce or change the positions of dust) but my Newtonian needs flats at the correct camera angle due to slight differences in the vignetting from side to side. I presume that is related to the secondary mirror offset and with some very careful setup I might improve even that, but it is consistently producing such nice data that I hesitate to touch it for now.
Do you find that rotating the camera is ok? That is, most all imperfections rotate with the camera?
Wayne
Hi Wayne,
99% of things rotate with the camera. Just light fall on mirror no, but this depends on the telescope like Paul tell to you. Also 1 to 3° of different rotation is tollerate on flat.
All the best
Leonardo