CaLIGHTs Software question...?

[Scott Kuchma]

Hi Peter ,

I've been Housecleaning my Hard Drive today in an effort to try and find the problem with my Comet Processing thru DSS 4.2.5 and after CaLIGHTs 3.10.92 .

On a suggestion from John M. , I ran all my Lights , Darks , Flats , Bias and DarkFlats through DSS only . Final result was still a mess but I did notice something of interest in the Files .

Both my ISO3200 Bias and Dark Files had a set of Files named IMG_X1(1).CR2  through to the end of the List in the same Directory as my IMG_0001.CR2 Files . I'm suspecting that when I tried to create Master Cal Files from that Directory all these "extra" files were included with the normal CR2 Files and it pooched the Master File . There were two extra entries in both Directories as well . (I'll attach the Text Files)

MasterDark_ISO3200_59s.Description.txt     at 3Kb

MasterDark_ISO3200_59s.tif   at 48Mb

MasterOffset_ISO3200_59s.Description.txt   at 3Kb

MasterOffset_ISO3200_59s.tif   at 48Mb

The Tif Files were just black Images .

Any ideas on where these 4 Files came from or the IMG_X1(1).CR2 Files ?

On a side note , ALL of my Calibration Master Files that I ran through v3.10.90 , at the time , have all disappeared from their respective directories . So , I've been redoing all the DARKS , BIAS's , FLATS and DARKFLATS again this time through the 3.10.92 release .

So , after a massive cleanup of duplicate and redundant Files (14Gb) I'm now going to try ReProcessing the problem Images I've had that just happen to be the ISO3200 ones !

I'll keep you posted .

Scott..........

[wols...@gmail.com]

Scott,

They are definitely not CaLIGHTs created files.  I think all four are DSS files.  The two tif files are a masterDark and a masterOffset files create by DSS.  The .Description.txt files contain all of the details regarding the creation of these two masters.

You must have loaded DARK frames into DSS as DARKs and loaded BIAS frames as OFFSET/BIAS files.  You probably also loaded some LIGHT frames and then told DSS to stack.  DSS will then combine all of the DARKs and create a masterDark and the masterOffset as it tried to stack your LIGHT frames.  This is what lots of DSS users do all the time.  Personally, I could never get consistent results and most times DSS would crash.  That's why I wrote CaLIGHTs.  DSS is very good a stacking but I never got good results having DSS perform calibration so I calibrate with CaLIGHTs and stack with DSS.

Those Tif files are probably valid DSS masters.  Remember that DARK and BIAS frames are always very dark.

Peter

[Scott Kuchma]

Thanks Peter , I appreciate the clarification . I re-ran the few ISO3200 Images that were "borderline" before and only saw tiny improvements on those . Maybe a better Star field but less colour in the Nebula .

The Comet ones still will not Stack without artifacts . I'm going to keep looking at that Process until I figure this out .

Scott....