Sky flats (yes, again)

Okay, I know, we’ve talked about this. But as the guy who started [the massive thread][1]

[1]: Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos on the old site by requesting this feature, and then said I had determined it wasn’t necessary after all . . . well, I was wrong. I had decided that I could do flats by pointing my scope horizontal at an illuminated panel on my obs wall. Wrong. It turns out that in an SCT with moving mirrors, like mine, you just can’t get away with that, because the [mirror shifts enough that the flats are horrible][1].

[1]: Flats and standard (moving mirror) SCTs - Experienced Deep Sky Imaging - Cloudy Nights I’m not sure why it’s taken me so long to discover this.

So, I’m back to taking sky flats, and I would LOVE to automate the process. So I re-enter my beg for a sky flats feature.

(And I really like the new forums. If only all my Y groups would move.)

Kevin

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I love sky flats too. CCDCC has the automated routine down pretty well and usually I’ll shoot my flats that way these days. As fun as a panel is, I find sky flats are free and work darn good.

d

The ideal solution would be one that would allow you to select where you want to point in the sky, and do multiple sets. That way if in one night I shot, say, both a circumpolar target and one in the southern sky, I could take sky flats in both orientations. Obviously you can’t platesolve for sky flats, so maybe SGP could take pointing info from the mount?

d - do you mean CCD Auto Pilot, or something else?

Most mounts will allow you to command an alt/az position. That’s what CCDCC does. It works pretty good. It’ll even run almanac calculations to figure out when it should start. And then it runs what is essentially the calibration routine every frame so that your ADU count is accurate as the sun goes out. Bonus points would be awarded if it could shoot matching darks at the end of the session :D.