My STXL16200 has been working fine for several years. Last night all of the images were extremely dark with maximum pixel counts under 2000 and completely black background. This morning I tested things by trying to take some flats and the resulte were highly variable. Some were completely white at the top half of the image and black at the bottom. Others looked like the attached image. I have a spare STXL16200 and I swapped it for the faulty one and everything worked perfectly which would seem to exclude software, cabling, power, etc. I suspect that this needs to go into servicing but any thoughts appreciasted. Thanks!
We always request a FITS file, as we really can't tell anything from a JPEG. (That said, it doesn't look good... may need repairs.)
The problem first manifest with EXTREMELY dark but otherwise recognizable images. I've attached a 1200s exposure of NGC4631. After that, when I started taking test flats , the results were highly variable. Sometimes the vertical lines as seen above, sometimes top half white, bottom half dark, etc. Unfortunately, I trashed all of those flats images, but I don't think they added much. As I said, the swapped in the second STXL16200 works perfectly, so that eliminates a lot of possibilities. I posted to see if anyone had any quick fix ideas, but I agree that it probably needs to go to Bill Lynch for repairs.
For completeness I took this over to the house of a fellow imager. Using his computer, we checked the firmware and updated one file. The problem persisted so I'm sending it to Bill Lynch.
