RE: Dark Frame Check

[Tom Droege <tdroege2@earthlink.net>]

Rob,

Yep, I thought it would be a good idea too.  TN-42 shows such a 
design.  ST-1 shows that we actually built it.  It was abandoned for 
another reason.

I may try to revive it for the dome but there is not much room.

I suspect that flat fielding will just not be "the" problem.  I think that 
the large angle of the sky and the lousy sky around here is the main 
problem.  I bet that all the flat fielding in the world will not change 
it.  I have tried almost everything to change the error distribution that I 
get and nothing changes it much.  So I think that we are getting what we 
will get.  This is good news in a way.  It means that I can just run 
without much fussing with darks and flats and get the result I am 
getting.  It is good enough for some useful science, I think.

Tom Droege

At 02:51 PM 2/21/03 -0700, you wrote:

>Hey Tom,
>
>I don't believe you have the room in your dome for this, but I figure I'll
>still present the idea.
>
>What about having fixed light boxes, and moving the TOM's to point at the
>light boxes when you want to take flats?  If you move the DEC limit switch
>so when the optical tubes are level, you are just off the switch, you will
>have a fairly repeatable location to move to.  RA can be controlled
>accurately from it's limit, especially at slow speeds.  I have good
>repeatability for ROB's level position on both axis.
>
>I have hopes of doing this with ROB when I get his permanent home built, so
>please don't say this is a bad idea ;-).
>
>Cheers,
>Rob
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Tom Droege [mailto:tdroege2@earthlink.net]
>Sent: Friday, February 21, 2003 12:38 PM
>To: tass@listserv.wwa.com
>Subject: Dark Frame Check
>
>At the moment, I see no alternative but to use light box flats.  Possibly
>cloud flats will work.  This will be a pain for TOM2 and TOM3 since someone
>has to climb up inside the dome to attach the flat box to the lenses.  This
>is more than I can do.  Sigh!