[Aavso-photometry] Hot pixels and precision.

[Pedro Pastor]

I have recently acquired a ST-10 camera and I am in the process to get
to know how it works.

The first thing I did notice is the great number of hot pixels it
produces (at least compared with my previous MX916). 

I’ve tried to eliminate those hot pixels doing many dark frames and
combining them via “Median combine” or “Sigma reject”. This produces a
nice Master dark frame, BUT that’s not enough for suppressing the hot
pixels from the “Light frames”.

If I would be doing “post card” CCD images I’d take many light frames
and I’d Sigma combine them for eliminating hot pixels, BUT that’s not
the case for photometry.

The point is: What would you recommend me to do? (Apart from changing
the CCD camera ;-). Is there any other ST-10 user out there with similar
problem?

On the other hand, I keep my MX916. One of the reasons for getting the
ST-10 was the anti-blooming built-in system in the MX916. I think this
system was affecting my measures but I still don't know how (the
anti-blooming is only implemented in one specific direction). Could
someone tell me how MX series anti-bloomming system affect the precision
of the ADU measures? Is there any good strategy for compensating (or
correcting) that effect?


Thank you very much in advance.

Pedro