Simple explanation of lights, darks, flats and bias...?

[Johnny666666]

Lost me completely now... And this is just the 'beginners' section...? I think I'll stick to landscapes

[Russe]

Lost me completely now... And this is just the 'beginners' section...? I think I'll stick to landscapes

Sorry - didn't mean to steal your thread!!

[Johnny666666]

Sorry - didn't mean to steal your thread!!

No worries

[mcinek82]

Lost me completely now... And this is just the 'beginners' section...? I think I'll stick to landscapes

Don't give up

As in most cases, the discussion goes deep and beyond the scope of a beginner (as people here are really helpful).

From a beginner's [that is - myself] perspective (a little summary):

1. Lights - the image we want to see
2. Darks - substraction of noise
3. Flats - substraction of vignetting, dust etc. (and they're easier to take with lens than with a scope, as far as I've tried)
4. Bias - substraction of noise caused by electronics (but consider: http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/92031-how-to-take-bias-frames-on-a-dslr/?p=908429, post #4)

I hope it clears you out some of your questions.

[lensman57]

Don't want to nick the thread but I tried using a monitor as a light source for flats.

The flats turned out blue with AV mode, had to expose for near 10secs for white........thoughts please thanks.

The colour of the flats is not an issue as the stacking software will apply a BoxType filter to destroy the Bayer matrix prior to processing,  the histogram however, is very important. With 10s you have probably saturated the pixels to the extent that the flats are useless. the histogram should be about 35% ~50% of the way in. If your capture software allows it then you should have a back ground value of about 20000~25000 ADU.

A.G