Help with flats

[Albir phil]

Hi just need some advice on taking flats ,I have W O 81 GT, and zwo 533 colour camera ,if anyone has same or similar set up how do you aquire your flats.Seems more involved than with DSLR . Hope someone can help🤔

[Elp]

Do you have an LED flat panel or tracing panel (many on Amazon)?

Alternatives are use a computer or tablet screen set to display a white image only but with any option you'll have to diffuse the light so they don't cast any pattern, multiple sheets of paper, white t shirt will do. I use layers of perspex/acrylic of different monochromatic colours sandwiched between the OTA and the led panel dimmed to its lowest setting.

[Elp]

Are you using a computer controller with your setup for the image acquisition?

[Albir phil]

7 minutes ago, Elp said:

Are you using a computer controller with your setup for the image acquisition?

Thinking about getting a led flat panel, my set-up is run through asiar mini ,it just seems more complicated with a dedicated CMOS camera I'm use to a dslr

[Elp]

With an air it's easy, within the autorun section, you set to record flats, how many and set the exposure to auto and it will auto calculate the correct duration. Much easier than doing it manually.

[Albir phil]

22 minutes ago, Elp said:

With an air it's easy, within the autorun section, you set to record flats, how many and set the exposure to auto and it will auto calculate the correct duration. Much easier than doing it manually.

👍👍

[Stu Wilson]

led flat panel with white tshirt over it.  The range

[rockinrome]

Hi Albir

For what it's worth I use the white t-shirt method over the objective. I've used NINA and APT with their Flat Wizard in the past with good results in the range of 0.001s - 1s exposure.

 

[LaurenceT]

I've only just started taking flats and dark flats (novice mistake) and I'm using a panel bought from the same place I buy my dew heaters. It's made quite a difference, no weird blobs on images caused by little bits of stuff in the imaging train!

I've cobbled it together with a spare mobile phone charger using 3M Command picture hanging strips and a short usb cable, makes it very easy to use.

5 Inch LED Light Panel (dewcontrol.com)