Flats light panel

[Ken82]

Since I’m currently looking to change to a mono camera I thought it would be sensible to have a look at making the flats process easier.

I’ve seen a few posts over the years where people have produced a light panel and added A4 paper to the front giving a nice flat illuminated area.

I wanted to do something similar so I purchased a cheap LED panel on amazon and cut around the telescope circumference. I left the box around the panel and added Velcro to the inside to keep it flat against the outside. I also cut out the power inlet and on/off button.

Very pleased with the result ! I’ll keep it velcroed to the inside of the observatory. 

 

[Stub Mandrel]

Has that one got a 'hexagonal' pattern on it without the paper?

I've got one but haven't used it because of the pattern.

<edit> I think mine is the same as the on/off symbol is identical. A sheet of paper does seem to help a lot. I just tried it with a USB lead that measures the current/voltage. Interesting to see the three settings are 0.1, 0.3 and 0.5A.

[upahill]

This looks great. I was curious about the pattern too - some of the ones I looked at on Azon had a dot pattern - I didn't know how it would affect the flats so ended up going EL panel with LED diffusing acrylic myself. I think the sheet of paper or two probably does the trick though at diffusing any patterns.

 

[Ken82]

Yea it does have a dot pattern but I’ve found adding a couple of A4 sheets of paper completely removes this and gives similar flats to using a white T-shirt. 

[Stargazer33]

I would imagine as long as you have enough of a gap between the panel and your diffuser, be it white paper, acrylic or even a T-shirt, then any pattern should be negated.

[Stub Mandrel]

My only remaining concern is that there is probably a gradient across the panel - shoudl be easy to address by rotating it, as I normally rotate the OTA and take two or three shots in each of twelve orientations moving the panel will be easier.

 

[sloz1664]

I decided I wanted to automate my flats process and purchased an A2 led panel that could be secured inside my Obsy and accommodate my twin AA80 triplet & WO star71 set-up and also my Tal 200k. It had to be able to automatically sequence within SGPro so I could collect dedicated flats after my lights. This great diy project can be found here:-

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/536533-diy-alnitak-flat-panel/

Steve