6303E - Lots and Lots of Hot Pixels

Please see the attached file which is a jpeg of my 10 minute master dark. It seems to have a massive number of hot pixels, with trailing horizontal pixel lines in most cases. Requires heavy processing to eliminate. Is this normal or do I need to send this in for servicing?

Thanks,

Jim

 

Here is the file. Wouldn't load the first time so I just made a crop to make it smaller but it shows what I am talking about.

Jim

 

Doug,

Right, should have thought about that, but its the same with the raw sub. Shot at the limit, -35C. Again had to crop to get upload to work.

Best,

Jim

 

Doug,

I am getting that for you (away from home so need to contact New Mexico Skies for the serial number which is where I got it in December 2015 and where it is used remotely). One thing I didn't think to check earlier was to blink the dark subs. While some of the hot pixels stay put, many if not most jump around from sub to sub. That is why the Master is such a mess since it is accumulating all the different locations for the hot pixels from 100 dark subs.

Jim

 

Doug,

These 5 are crops of exactly the same field (using Pixinsight Dynamic Crop tool).

Blinking makes my point obvious.

Jim

 

Doug,

The serial number is X15110003. Mike Rice has pulled the camera off the scope and tested it in isolation with all other equipment removed and sees the same thing so it likely needs to come in. If you send me instructions, I will send those along the New Mexico Skies for them to ship to you for repairs. Just to note, hopefully the repairs will also address some other issues I have been having with the CCD and the SkyX Camera Add-on and CCDAP5. I get intermittent error messages when changing filters or with the CCD timing out that makes automation hugely problematic since the automation programs shut down as soon as an error happens. As such it has been impossible to use AP% to date and I need to run each filter separately when imaging. On the filter issue, which is the biggest headache, when I hit the manual filter change a second or third time the error clears and the filter moves fine. But its that first error that shuts down the automation. Hopefully you have a fix for that as wel or its the same interference causing the filter mess. Be sure to let me know all of what you want sent in since I have the self guiding filter wheel and the AOX, though the AOX was not hooked up when I shot the darks I attached above..

Best,

JIm