Joe, Just take binned exposures with the camera or scope covered and use them as darks for your color frames. The software doesn't care. A dark frame is just a picture of darkness, that is of the same duration as the light frames. I take my darks inside with the camera disconnected from the scope and the shutter closed, while sitting in my office. Daytime is the right time to take darks. Save your nights for taking light frames! Cheers, Tyler -----Original Message----- From: utah-astronomy-bounces@mailman.xmission.com [mailto:utah-astronomy-bounces@mailman.xmission.com] On Behalf Of Joe Bauman Sent: Monday, May 09, 2011 11:15 AM To: Utah Astronomy Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Galaxy fight Thanks, Tyler. My big regret is that I screwed up taking color subs -- an hour's worth. I shot the luminosity without binning, with separate darks that I subtracted later. Unfortunately, I thought I could subtract the same unbinned darks from the color exposures, which were binned. That turns out to be impossible. There is no way to scale the binned views up to match the darks or to scale the darks down to match the binned color exposures. Also, there is no way I can find with my software to take binned darks. So we're only seeing half the exposure here and none of the color. -- Best wishes, Joe ________________________________ From: Tyler Allred <tylerallred@earthlink.net> To: 'Utah Astronomy' <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Monday, May 9, 2011 11:04 AM Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Galaxy fight Very nice work, Joe! Tyler -----Original Message----- From: utah-astronomy-bounces@mailman.xmission.com [mailto:utah-astronomy-bounces@mailman.xmission.com] On Behalf Of Joe Bauman Sent: Friday, May 06, 2011 2:36 PM To: Utah Astronomy Subject: [Utah-astronomy] Galaxy fight Hi, Here's an image I took Wednesday night-Thursday morning from Lakeside. It shows interacting galaxies NGC5426 and NGC5427. I plan to write a blog about it later. Comments always welcome. Thanks, Joe http://www.slas.us/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=4247&g2_imageViewsIndex=1 _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://www.slas.us/gallery2/main.php _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://www.slas.us/gallery2/main.php _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://www.slas.us/gallery2/main.php