Imaging with SPC900... Darks or not?

[Perkil8r]

It's just occured to me that in effect, when imaging with a webcam you are just taking 1,000's of short exposures. If that's the case, is it a good idea to take the same amount of frames with the cap on? Not sure why I didn't think of this at the time when I played with saturn the other night. Will it help? If so do you load the darks as an AVI in registax, or if not how does it work?

[+Graham]

Hi Mike

You can load a 'Darks' AVI into registax there is a button on the top task bar for them.

I have tried it but it did not seem to make any difference to the final result.

Edited June 1, 2012 by Astrotec Limited

[Guest Kheldar]

Darks will make virtually no difference with millisecond exposures.

Dark signal is accumulated over time (minutes)

Edited June 1, 2012 by Kheldar

[Perkil8r]

Thanks for that, I just wondered that was all.

[Guest AstronomyShed]

Kheldar is correct with regards spc900 but you 'may' get some benefit if you are using a cmos chip based camera as opposed to a ccd as cmos can be a bit noisy, in fact the cameras currently entering the market from ZWOPtical have a dark subtraction routine built into the software/driver.