A flatbox that's...flat!

[anthony]

Cheers for the inverter link Jon - I completely missed that bit.

You want a product that gives a continuous spectrum from what I can gather - white light as perceived by the eye might well have certain wavelengths diminished or absent. As to how much this varies between panels from different manufacturers, or if it has a big influence on the quality of the flat frame I do not know. It has been mentioned as being more significant when flat fielding narrowband images.

The inverter also does the job of upping the voltage (I think) so it'd seem wise to get an appropriate supply.

An A4 one with inverter from Ian King is around £130 (shipping might add to that), direct from Gerd Neumann is about £120 inc shipping - this is one with a frame fitted. The EF panels link above seems to be just under £60.

Either way a nice solution. Having a few scopes under 8" I could flat field them all easily with something that stores away nicely. Could also get rid of the cumbersome light box and all the different fittings for the different scopes!

Anthony

[ollypenrice]

People do use laptop screens but they are not that handy and are prone to suddenly tell you something that is important to Bill Gates! Or they just go blue or do some other univited thing.

The purpose of a flat is very simple even if getting good ones isn't always easy. A picture taken of something evenly white should be evenly white but won't be. Dust will create out of focus doughnuts of darkness. Your lens - even a Takahshi FSQ - will not illuminate the feild with perfect even-ness. The middle will be brighter. A flat (or an average of several) will allow your software to boost these dark areas by just enough to make them the same as the white areas IN YOUR REAL IMAGE so the defects are corrected.

Pain in the bum but necessary.

Olly

[skybadger]

AS far as can you change the brightness - yes you can . They typically use a controller to generate a 100V AC low current supply to energise the light source. This can be PWM'd if you can find the controller chip right inputs but does involve a bit of confidence iwth a circuit and soldering iron.

Mike