Building a Dark Library Generation

[Acceptedplanet]

I was thinking of generating a darks library.
What software do people use to automate this? Rather then by hand each one 
How do you structure them when saved e.g folder structure?
How do you decide exposure/gain/binning/temp etc choices?

I have the ZW0 533, so if you have same be good to know what you use. It cooled so was thing doing some at say -10 and -15 maybe

Any advice would be good as know you can do these anytime 

[Stuart1971]

The darks must always be of the same duration, gain, offset and temperature as your light frames, so this is what dictates….and can be taken in the same software as you use to image your light frames…..

Edited January 28, 2022 by Stuart1971

[discardedastro]

Match the light frames for your darks, of course, as above.

Then just take as many as you can in a session, at the right temperature and definitely dark. Ideally pop a cap on your camera and put it in the fridge. I usually take mine on cloudy moonless nights, with the telescope under cover (and itself capped and pretty comprehensively light-blocked), so I don't invalidate the flats by demounting the camera. Capture-wise I just have KStars capture 50 and I repeat till I get bored, so my average master dark is 100+ frames combined. The ASI183MM is very amp-glow-heavy so benefits from good calibration.

Structurally I keep my master darks/flats only in a folder named by capture date and I generally do darks/flats prior to imaging. I've got quite a bit of data (3000+ light frames) so I've got my own database system built on top of all that which manages which lights need which calibration files, etc. But most generally I try and calibrate as soon as I've done capture, and then store (in addition to the raw frames) calibrated light frames so I can always go back and re-integrate etc.

Edited January 29, 2022 by discardedastro

[The Lazy Astronomer]

2 hours ago, Acceptedplanet said:

I was thinking of generating a darks library.
What software do people use to automate this? Rather then by hand each one 
How do you structure them when saved e.g folder structure?
How do you decide exposure/gain/binning/temp etc choices?

I have the ZW0 533, so if you have same be good to know what you use. It cooled so was thing doing some at say -10 and -15 maybe

Any advice would be good as know you can do these anytime 

To simplify things, pick a temperature and stick to it. Dark current is insignificant compared to other sources of noise, so don't worry too much about it. I went with -10C, purely because l feel like its extremely unlikely the ambient temperature at night will ever be lower than that, or more than 35C above that.

Regardless of which temperature you settle on, as has been mentioned above, you should take darks with settings to match the lights you have used (or will use).

Whatever capture software you use will have the ability to set a sequence for dark frame capture so you can set it up and let it run - I use NINA and take 20 subs.

Folder structure is pretty simple: dark library/[camera model]/[gain, offset and binning]/[exposure time]/[individual subs]. I also copy the master calibration frames into each folder with the lights for each project, for simplicity should I ever feel the need to go back and restack.