Astrophotography Calibration Tutorial

In this tutorial I explain what calibration is all about in Deep Sky Astrophotography, what types of frames are needed (Lights, Darks, Flats, Dark Flats, Offset/Bias) and why, and how to create them. I show examples of the effects of calibration, and give a demonstration of how to stack your photos using calibration frames in DeepSkyStacker.

Light Box for Flats can be purchased here:

[GrahamtheWood]

Brilliant tutorial again Martin, thanks for taking the time and trouble to make life easier for some of us new to the astrophotography world. Keep them coming

[OutlandishJourneys]

Martin, so glad I found your Channel! Excellent, clear and concise info...brilliantly laid out and easy to follow! Binge watching your uploads now! Keep up the great work and sending best wishes from Scotland! Cheers!

[douglassmith]

This is a great video but I would like to add that at 10:00 you say that bias frames are not that important. That may be true for CMOS but it's not true for CCD. With CCD sensors, read out noise is quite significant and can have very particular patterns, which will actually even be visible in the dark frames. The actual dark current noise for CCD is quite small. CMOS, in contrast, can have all kinds of "dark noise" such as "amp glow", but the readout noise is pretty low and fairly patternless. So it's worth pointing out that different calibration strategies are required for CMOS and CCD.

[chrisheyward]

Hi Martin just a quickie. Regarding the stacking feature, I’m interested to know what processing power you would need to do this number of files on pc or laptop.ie Memory
Many thanks. Great tutorials

[siegfriednoet]

Very helpful, thank you
In DSS shouldn't you set the amount of stars to stack or is it just fine as it is ? And what amount of stars should you have to do a good stack ?