After Hurricane Dorian finally moved on and things settled down here in Florida, I was finally able to do some imaging with my new STF-8050SC after you repaired and returned it to me (spikes off the right side of all the stars). Well, now there's a new problem that I can't solve. I've attached some calibrated and stacked images of a target I shot this weekend. I've included examples from 300 second, 600 second and 900 second subs. I've also included one of the 900 second raw subs. As you can see, there are now long dark streaks extending to the right from the stars and a "haze" across the image. These issues become more apparent as the exposure times increase. The target is faint so the problem wasn't apparent in the individual subs and only became noticeable in the stacked product. I've tried every possible calibration adjustment I can think of but none mitigate these issues. I need your help (again!). I was hoping your fix for the last problem would take care of everything, but sadly that's obviously not the case. Please let me know ASAP what we need to do with the camera now. Curt Morton
That is disappointing. The "haze" appears to be an optical effect. It suggests that something is scattering light. Make sure your telescope optics weren't fogging! We can of course inspect the camera window etc. That sort of thing becomes more visible with bright stars against a faint background. The dark streaks are very subtle in your raw FITS frame - it's not surprising we didn't see them in our testing. They are unfortunately more visible on stacked exposures. it looks like we overdid the adjustment we made on your camera. We can fix that, but we'll have to get the camera back again. Really sorry about that.
Curt, We've investigated the problem and found a simple solution for it. So far everything looks good. We will complete the testing on Monday and get your camera back to you ASAP. Doug
That's very encouraging, Doug. Here's hoping everything's good this time. When you're satisfied with the fix I'd like to know what the problem was and what you did to fix it. Curt
