Episode 74 - "A dystopian nightmare!"

**WARNING! Roo gets a bit ANGRY during this one!**

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WELCOME BAAAACK to The Astrocast! This week, Roo takes you through some recent news that could potentially have a HUGE impact on the Astronomical community much sooner than you think! Also, how to take flats! 

Links from this weeks show:

Email these jerks and tell them they suck if they put giant mirrors in our night skies

Flat Tracing Panels: https://amzn.to/4ntTrUk

Dark Dragons Astronomy

Scott Meyers: Off to be the Wizard (audiobook)

Scott Meyers: Off to be the Wizard (physical book)

Follow The Astrocast on FB

#StopLightPollution

#DarkSkiesForAll

Join the Patreon community for access to our members only Discord family, the Astrocast Society! We've COMPLETELY rebuilt our Discord from the ground up, and it really is a sight to behold! Special thank you to Tim for all his hard work in recent weeks to get this up to date! THANK YOU to our newest members, Chris, Ken, and Lex!! Welcome to the Astrofam!

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We'll be back next week with another all-new episode, and until then - as always - CLEAR SKIES! 

<3

Roo

Transcript

00;00;22;17 - 00;00;31;21
Captain Cumulus
Main engines start. 10. 9. 8. 7.

00;00;31;23 - 00;00;52;20
Captain Cumulus
You are listening to the Astrocast!

00;00;52;22 - 00;01;43;02
Roo
Welcome back to the Astro cast. Oh, I'm your host, Roo. Today is Wednesday, October 20th 2nd to 2025. Oh, it's new moon week. Your. Every astronomer's favorite time of the 28 day lunar cycle. I guess technically, we're at eight. Slightly waxing crescent moon. Hope everybody's been well. I know I, have been a very, very busy boy. What else is new there?

00;01;43;02 - 00;02;13;10
Roo
Right? Let me, see if we can get this music to gently fade away. So, what have you guys been up to? I've, I've been both lucky and not so lucky in my clear skies as of late. So I've been working on a project. I think I hinted at it last week on the show. I told everybody how I obviously joined the 2600 club, which I am very, very happy to be a member of.

00;02;13;10 - 00;02;37;01
Roo
Card carrying member. Now, and I have been working on a pretty well for me, pretty big project of the Pleiades. So the Pleiades has obviously always been one of my favorite, asterisms or clusters, whatever you want to call it. I believe it's an asterism, technically, I think. I don't know, I could be wrong about that.

00;02;37;04 - 00;03;06;17
Roo
But it's a very, very beautiful part of our night sky, and I always just love it this time of year when it comes around. Because you know what comes right after the Pleiades? If you just wait a few hours, undoubtedly Orion will follow shortly behind. So I always had it in my head with Orion, that it would be fun to do a really, you know, long project that was very drawn out.

00;03;06;17 - 00;03;35;04
Roo
But then when I talked about IFN earlier this year on the show, and I had mentioned at one point that I was able to get a lot of the, IFN dust that is surrounding the Pleiades, in a past project. But, you know, the quality of the overall image still left something to be desired, because while I was able to pull out a ton of that dust, it was still a little bit of a noisy image.

00;03;35;07 - 00;03;58;07
Roo
And even with the great tools that we have at our disposal these days, you know, if you're like me and you stretched stuff to its limits, if you don't have enough actual data, you know, at some point that weakness is still going to show. So to that end, I said, you know what would be a good number, for M45?

00;03;58;10 - 00;04;19;18
Roo
And I think I don't know why, but it just occurred to me that the correct number of hours, it's right there in the name, it was just sitting there waiting on me. And for whatever reason, I decided that 45 hours would be the right number for me. I think a lot of the credit probably belongs with Justin.

00;04;19;20 - 00;04;52;07
Roo
He is a, almost like a folk hero for the show at this point. I will add, by the way, I sent this photo to all of our, Patreon discord members, which we'll get to later. But he actually did send in a copy of one of his photos. So if you listen to the episode a couple months ago where Justin joined us and you heard me just, you know, gobsmacked about the quality of his images because of the time that he put into them.

00;04;52;09 - 00;05;14;11
Roo
He did send me a copy of one. So if you'd like to see that image, please feel free to jump over to the Astro Cast Facebook page. I'll put a link in the show notes for it. And, by all means, please pop over there and have a look at it. But, you know, I thought 45 hours on M45 would be just a really, really, good way to go.

00;05;14;11 - 00;05;40;13
Roo
I think in the past, from my home location, I've gotten about ten hours of data, and, you know, ten hours is enough to bring out that dust in the area that is surrounding the Pleiades. But with the 2600, you know, with the much higher pixel count, and I'm putting it through, my Petzel telescope, which is, you know, the astro graph, the sky 55.

00;05;40;15 - 00;06;07;24
Roo
It frames up really well, the Pleiades isn't quite as zoomed in, but again, that's not what I'm going for. I'm okay with having a wider field of view on this one, because I really want to capture all of that beautiful if and dust that is surrounding it. So, to that end, I was able to successfully gather so far more than 30 hours of data on the Pleiades.

00;06;07;24 - 00;06;35;22
Roo
So I think I've gotten five nights in total. If I'm not mistaken, I'm doing three minute subs. I have predominantly been doing it with the new light pollution filter, which of course is the Leviathan Spectral Pro, which I have on long term loan from Leviathan and James, actually, from Leviathan. James. He listened to the show last week and he thought, wow, that sounds like a really cool project.

00;06;35;24 - 00;07;00;18
Roo
And he messaged me and said that he would also recommend incorporating some data without the filter to maybe make that dust pop even a little bit more. So I think what I'm going to do, now that I've got, you know, more than 30 hours of data with the filter is I might try to go for like, I don't know, 5 to 10 hours of data of just like regular 62nd subs.

00;07;00;18 - 00;07;28;14
Roo
I'm thinking, with a regular uvi filter, I don't know, I'm gonna have to play around with it and see what kind of exposure I can get versus the light pollution here, without, you know, blowing the whole image out. You have to be careful, you know, whenever you're mixing, different increments of time, you can absolutely take, you know, a stack of data with three minute subs and then incorporate a stack of data with 60s subs into it.

00;07;28;17 - 00;07;50;18
Roo
But you just want to be careful, that you're, you know, matching things like, you know, the temperature and various other settings. You want to make sure your flats are properly incorporated and stacked correctly before you stack. Ultimately, those two sets of data together to hopefully bring out the best of both worlds. So I've had a lot of success with that.

00;07;50;20 - 00;08;10;01
Roo
The only thing that I'm a little bit disappointed about is that I haven't been able to see either of the comets yet, so I am, you know, just a huge fan of hunting comets. And if you guys know, last year, you know, when the comet came around, I. I did everything in my power to see them.

00;08;10;01 - 00;08;42;12
Roo
But the clouds just have not worked in my cooperation. So, you know, the early mornings and the early evenings are the times to see this or these particular comets, Lemmon and Swan, and they just haven't cooperated with me. And what a shame. The 20th came and went and I was not able, to see it because that was the date, if you remember, from last week's episode, where it was going to line up perfectly in the, constellation of scutum.

00;08;42;12 - 00;09;05;16
Roo
And I really, really wanted to get that shot. But, you know, that's astronomy. Sometimes you get them and sometimes you don't. But we will live to see another day, and we'll try for another comet. And they're all beautiful. So if you have, managed to take a shot yourself, I would love to see it. Please feel free to, you know, tag me on any social media.

00;09;05;16 - 00;09;30;23
Roo
If you just hashtag the astro cast. I search that every week. Of course you're free. Feel free to email me or drop it on the Facebook page, whatever you like, but I would love to see your photos. Speaking of email, kind of a cool announcement. I recently purchased a new domain. So you are, listening to the proud owner of the Astro cast.com.

00;09;30;23 - 00;09;56;04
Roo
So that's something I've actually, I've wanted to do for a long time, and I wasn't able to do it because Astro cast.com is taken and I, I know that there's like web two domains that you can get, but I wasn't really particularly interested in any of those, and I don't know why it never occurred to me to search for the astro cast.com, but lo and behold, that was available.

00;09;56;04 - 00;10;21;13
Roo
So I did purchase the domain. Currently it's just redirecting to QC Rukam. I do have plans to build that out into its own, Astro cast centric website, so stay tuned for that. But since I own the domain now, I own the email addresses that go with it. So from now on, if you have any comments questions, anything at all about the show, feel free to email me.

00;10;21;13 - 00;10;54;18
Roo
You can do that at Roo at the Astro cast.com. So happy to say that I love Maru Astro Cassie gmail.com but Roo at the Astro cast.com. It just sounds so so much better. So in other astronomy news, last year I read an article about something that I'm sure many of you have probably seen or thought about. I'm sure it's crossed your mind at one point or another.

00;10;54;20 - 00;11;46;27
Roo
As all of these satellites continue to be launched at the pace that they're being launched and, you know, commercial space travel becomes cheaper and more economical every day. More companies are able to launch more things into space, which ultimately means more business is going to be taking place in low Earth orbit. So what what I saw when I was, reading last year and I say last year was actually in March of this year or so about, you know, six, seven months ago, was just a, an article that was written about a private company in Russia that wants to put large advertisements into low-Earth orbit, and they're trying to use, basically

00;11;46;27 - 00;12;30;24
Roo
like satellites and lasers to have constellations flyby that would show, like brand names in the night sky. And that, to me is disgusting on so many levels. And indeed, we have, you know, a lot of astronomers were were raising alarm about how bad this would be. And there were, you know, many, many, delegates from various nations that were trying to exclude Russia and basically ban space ads and, you know, saying that this could basically ruin ground based astronomy.

00;12;30;26 - 00;13;00;07
Roo
So, I mean, I don't even need to tell you if you put advertisements in space, you know, that's kind of the whole ballgame, right? But this was kind of, you know, they're kicking around the idea. Right? But it's not something that is fully launched. We're not seeing Pepsi float by Orion, anytime soon. But last week I was, doing my normal perusing of the news, as I do.

00;13;00;09 - 00;13;44;18
Roo
And the algorithm, knows me well. So it knows anytime that there's anything related to space, I generally want to see it. And the article that I read last week was even more disturbing than advertisements in space. So if you think advertisements in space are bad, wait until you hear this. So there is a company that is based out of the United States and Los Angeles County, to be specific, and it is called Reflect Orbital.

00;13;44;21 - 00;14;27;21
Roo
And they're an aerospace company that would like to launch satellites into low Earth orbit that would essentially have mirrors on them that would allow sunlight to be beamed down to Earth, even in the dead of night. Now, there are so many reasons why this is wrong. I don't even know where to start. There's good news and bad news for this.

00;14;27;24 - 00;14;56;24
Roo
I guess the first place that I will start is the company. So, like I said, it's called reflect Orbital. And if any of you would like to, you can go to reflect orbital.com/contact and send them a message. Don't send anything violent or threatening or nasty. That is not how we want our community to come off as.

00;14;56;26 - 00;15;34;12
Roo
However, we would like to communicate to them how important it is that we protect our dark skies. And while I appreciate the idea that they are trying to get at, which is ultimately they want to provide power to solar farms when it's not possible in the middle of the night. We are not using solar to its full potential, not even close in the middle of the day yet.

00;15;34;14 - 00;16;18;17
Roo
So to launch satellites into low Earth orbit, that could potentially be beaming down literal sunlight in the middle of the night while satellites fly over your head so someone's solar farm can get charged up at 1/12 the rate of what it would during the daytime. It really just boggles the mind to me. And it almost feels like this is like a proof of concept or they're, you know, trying to see if they can throw everything at the wall to get investors because it's such a crazy idea that they can probably get people to throw money at them.

00;16;18;24 - 00;16;45;28
Roo
I don't know. I don't know, because again, I feel like we have not even come close to utilizing, what we could potentially utilize solar for. And, you know, wireless power has not been explored far enough. Hell, space elevators still have a, long ways to go, but I think that that is a distinct possibility in our future.

00;16;45;28 - 00;17;19;04
Roo
And if we could do that, we could capture sunlight from space and then literally cable it down to Earth if we wanted to. Right. But to put proof of concepts into our night sky in the year 2025, when we already are launching thousands of satellites every year and have gone from 7000 satellites in the year 2000 to more than 15,000 satellites as of today.

00;17;19;06 - 00;17;52;18
Roo
With the plan for there to be 50,000 to 100,000 in the next decade, God knows we're probably going to have Pepsi flying by and the night sky before too much longer. The last thing we need is for birds circadian rhythms, humans, circadian rhythms, ground based astronomy, and everything else being disrupted, even if it's only for a small portion of the night.

00;17;52;19 - 00;18;19;28
Roo
That is how it starts, right? And that's not where it ends. And God forbid, this company somehow pulled it off and they were able to successfully beam this energy down, that that would be so, so bad for astronomy that I don't know where to begin it, honestly. I'm not trying to be like a fear monger, but stuff like that terrifies me.

00;18;19;28 - 00;18;46;27
Roo
And it leaves you in a place where I don't know. You know, I, I think to myself, like, you know, we'll be in a world one day where only the richest of the rich will be able to afford dark skies. And, I mean, let's be honest. We're already kind of on our way there. Because if you're a poor kid who lives in the inner city, chances are you are not getting out to the country to view the Milky Way anytime soon.

00;18;46;27 - 00;19;15;01
Roo
Right? So, I mean, take that out to its natural conclusion and then start beaming down light from the sky in the middle of the night. Where does that leave us? Where? Where are we as a society if if we don't even have starlight anymore? So I really do. I encourage everyone, to send them an email and think about it.

00;19;15;04 - 00;20;05;10
Roo
Like I say, don't be nasty about it. That won't help anything. But I, I'm genuinely, distraught over the thought of sunlight being beamed down at 2:00 in the morning while, you know, people are trying to sleep or we're trying to, you know, capture photos of M45 or capture photos of comets. Imagine for a moment if you scheduled a trip to the southern hemisphere a year in advance, and you went to the, Atacama Desert and, you know, trip of a lifetime and then you get down there only to find out that a constellation of.

00;20;05;15 - 00;21;02;07
Roo
I don't know what they call these things. Sun beamers is flying over you all night long. I mean, what a nightmare. And what's crazy is they're actually, they're they're poised to make this happen. So they have their test craft called the Arundell One, slated to launch next year. Okay. And if the test goes well, they are planning to launch thousands more with a constellation of more than 4000 satellites, each of which would carry a 180ft mirror designed to focus sunlight on the Earth.

00;21;02;10 - 00;21;44;15
Roo
You're talking at that scale. You're talking about a patch of sunlight more than four miles across. And way brighter than the full moon. Still dimmer than a midday sun, obviously, but way brighter than the full moon. 4000 of them. It's not often that I'm, like, dumbfounded. While I'm giving you guys the news on things, but I, I saw this last week and I'm, I'm reading the article and there's like, a lot of hurdles that they still have to get over.

00;21;44;19 - 00;22;10;20
Roo
Not the least of which is cost, because obviously, it's it's not cheap to get, you know, satellites into space. Still, I mean, it's a lot more affordable than it used to be. Yeah, absolutely. But those mirrors are only able to generate about 20% of what regular sunlight can generate. Okay. And obviously they can't generate it through the cloud.

00;22;10;20 - 00;22;44;13
Roo
So if it's cloudy out, you still can't do anything with that. So I hope and pray that this fails. And and when I say fails, I mean it fails flat on its ass. Excuse my language, but it's just a terrible idea. That they say that, you know, rural towns and open fields would get brief, startling burst of extra light, you know?

00;22;44;15 - 00;23;18;18
Roo
And and just imagine that, you know, you're you're sitting out in your dark sky site enjoying, beautiful evening, its new moon. And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, a constellation, you know, five times the size of Starlink comes overhead with four mile wide patches of sunlight beaming down on you. Just the thought of it. It literally makes me crazy.

00;23;18;25 - 00;23;58;06
Roo
The founder actually has floated the idea of having a quarter million satellite constellation, a quarter million. So, yeah, I don't know why he doesn't just build a Dyson sphere at that point. Like, why would you want to put 250,000 satellites around our planet? I don't know. That's beyond me. But, yeah, that's, that's what they're planning to do.

00;23;58;08 - 00;24;20;21
Roo
It's it's not great, guys. And I hate to say it, but, like, there's not a lot of hurdles for them to cross other than getting investors. I mean, heck, look at, look at SpaceX. I mean, if you've got deep pockets, you can do whatever you want in this world. Nothing's going to stop you from doing it.

00;24;20;21 - 00;24;47;15
Roo
Certainly not a conglomerate of scientists coming together and saying, please don't do this. You can destroy the circadian rhythms of some of our most important animals. They don't care. They want to make more money. You know, so, you know, write them a letter. I know I'm certainly going to. I just I need to temper myself a little bit.

00;24;47;15 - 00;25;21;16
Roo
Forgive me if I'm passionate. I'm passionate about light pollution. You guys know this. Like, that is something that is near and dear to my heart. You rarely will see a piece of merch that I sell that doesn't have something to say about light pollution on it. And I know that it's not much, but that's, you know, one little thing that I can do where I know if someone in Europe buys an astro cast shirt or a bumper sticker at least, maybe one other stranger that I don't know in Europe sees that and says, oh, light pollution, what's that?

00;25;21;16 - 00;25;56;03
Roo
And then goes and looks it up, right. So that's kind of like, that's the, the calling card or the, you know, the, the hill that I on for this show is light pollution. And this might be the worst offender that I have ever seen. Thankfully, it's still conceptual as of this moment. But like I say, 2026 is less than three months away now, and they are planning to launch 180ft mirrors, 4000 satellites.

00;25;56;03 - 00;26;22;14
Roo
They already have investors. I don't know what stops these sort of things from happening. I guess maybe you could pass laws, but then they could just go to another country and get investors there. I mean, and honestly, let's let's be real, like in this day and age, like now you don't need to go to other countries. You can do it right here.

00;26;22;16 - 00;26;46;25
Roo
It's not like this is a beacon for the scientific community anymore here. And the good old U.S of a not to get political, but Yeah, I don't know, man. It it really does worry me. And it should worry you too. If it doesn't. Well, if you're listening to this show, I'm sure it does. So please look into it.

00;26;46;27 - 00;27;10;22
Roo
Please write them a letter. If you guys have any other ideas for things that we could do that would be productive. Let me know. I have a hard time getting my head around how to convince these people to just not do it, because obviously, they probably put a whole lot of work and effort into building this company.

00;27;10;28 - 00;27;37;21
Roo
And you can't just tell someone, hey, shut down your company. Like they'll just laugh at you, right? But like when your whole company is based on the premise of doing something that can completely destroy one of the most beautiful things that we can do on this planet, not to mention the circadian rhythms of birds, insects, and countless other animals.

00;27;37;23 - 00;28;11;11
Roo
I don't know how you can sleep at night if you are the founder of that company and you know these things, and I have a hard time believing if you've gotten this far, that you're unaware. So if you guys have any ideas for what we could do to to help prevent this from happening, please let me know. Shoot me an email at ru at the Astro Cars.com, and I would certainly love to have that discussion real quick.

00;28;11;14 - 00;28;32;15
Roo
To get on a different topic for a moment, I want to, say hello and welcome some new members to our Patreon and Discord family. I want to say hello to Lex, Ken, and Chris. We do have yet another Chris that is joining the group. There are quite a few Chris's. That's okay. I'm a Chris, too.

00;28;32;18 - 00;28;52;02
Roo
I go by ru, obviously, as you guys know, but, grew up in my two best friends growing up, like, in middle school and high school. They were both named Chris as well. So we all had our own nicknames. And Roo was always mine. So welcome to the group, Chris, Ken and Lex. Very, very super happy to have you guys.

00;28;52;02 - 00;29;15;22
Roo
You're all very interesting people. I love your rigs. We've got another person. And forgive me, I think it was Chris who said that he builds his own rigs. Sorry if I got that wrong. I might have that wrong. I'll have to look and see. But we've got another, basically machine shop guy that has built his own, mounts, which is super cool to see.

00;29;15;24 - 00;29;43;21
Roo
A lot of people in the discord actually are building their own mounts, which is really, really awesome. We actually have a mount dedicated to the Azure gas, the AC five. So shout out there. But, if you would like to join the group and help support the show and keep it ad free, which is the way we like to be, you can do that by going to Patreon.com forward, slash the Astro cast, every, dollar helps.

00;29;43;21 - 00;30;17;12
Roo
And I, greatly appreciate everybody supporting the show. Also, want to give a shout out to our sponsor, Dark Dragons Astronomy. We haven't talked about dark dragons in a few weeks, but I want to bring them up. Just to mention, if you are building an observatory and you need solutions for your role off roof, including, automations and being able to connect from a remote location no matter what the situation is with your hardware.

00;30;17;15 - 00;30;46;11
Roo
Those are the guys to talk to. So if you ever, need any assistance with your observatory needs, please look up dark dragons. Astronomy. Awesome. Guys. Friends of the show? Friends at the Charlotte Amateur Astronomers Club. I just renewed my membership there. Proud card carrying member of the Charlotte Astronomical community for years and years, and and certainly hope to be one for many more years to come.

00;30;46;13 - 00;31;06;14
Roo
And, I'll obviously link to dark Dragons in the show notes as well. Man, that got me a little bit worked up. That might might have been the most fire. You guys have heard of my voice yet? I can't say for sure, but it does get me worked up when I talk about that stuff. Because man, oh man, we need to protect what we have left of our dark skies.

00;31;06;14 - 00;31;28;13
Roo
Because, man, there's not a lot of them left. You know, 90% of the world lives. And you know Bortles six or higher. So you know if you're like me you're already dealing with light pollution on a daily basis. So the last thing you want is for sunlight to start getting beamed down in your house every night like that.

00;31;28;16 - 00;31;50;24
Roo
That just sounds like a total dystopian nightmare. I think that term is thrown around a lot. Dystopian nightmare. Everybody says it about everything nowadays. But that that is really pushing the envelope on it, I gotta say. So let's, hope and pray that that a whole situation just falls apart and it's not cost effective at all.

00;31;50;26 - 00;32;07;08
Roo
Hopefully someone comes out and says, hey, it would make more sense if you just built, a solar farm twice as big on the ground. Maybe that's the answer. You know, maybe just use more of the daylight sun that we already have instead of trying to beam it down at night. It just doesn't make sense to me either.

00;32;07;08 - 00;32;31;05
Roo
Like, does that make sense to you guys? Like going through all that effort of launching like I and I know you can make mirrors out of, you know, more lightweight materials than, you know, glass like we do typically, obviously, 180ft mirror. I'm assuming they're not launching a fragile James Webb type mirror into space. They're going to use some type of, reflective material while they're up there.

00;32;31;08 - 00;32;54;06
Roo
But there's no way that that's going to be cost efficient. Right? Right. I mean, I mean, I guess they've ran the numbers on it and they figured out a way to make it work. But man, oh man, 4000 of those. That's a frickin nightmare. I mean, and the guy is talking about a quarter million of them. That's that's all, buddy.

00;32;54;06 - 00;33;33;05
Roo
The audacity, the audacity. All right, so let's talk about something a little bit more happy and useful. Oh, so something that I get asked about quite frequently, and even if I'm not asked about it, it pops up quite a bit whenever I am, looking in forums or Facebook or what have you is flats and I know early on we did an episode called All About Calibration Frames, and I think it's a it's a pretty darn good episode.

00;33;33;07 - 00;34;13;13
Roo
But I think I was, probably focused a bit more on my two, nine, four macpro at the time. And that particular camera has some kind of weird quirks to it, that require you to take longer exposures than you generally otherwise would need to with most newer astronomy cameras. And because of that, I don't know how much that, knowledge applied to, you know, the average person who had something like a, five, eight, five MK pro or, 2600 MK Pro like I have now.

00;34;13;15 - 00;35;02;27
Roo
So first let's talk about what flats are for. So flats are a type of calibration frame okay. And they are used specifically to take care of vignetting and dust motes. And they can also take care of some, pixel issues like if you have hot pixels, for example. But your dark frames also work with those. It's when you don't use flats, though, you can run into some real issues with like patchiness, or you might have a big dust mote on your images, or if you're doing a, you know, a multi night, session like I'm currently doing with M45, you can run into some real problems because if you get dust

00;35;02;27 - 00;35;31;18
Roo
in one spot on night one and then dust in another spot on night three, and you don't account for that by taking flats each night. Well, you might end up with 45 hours of data. That's not really useful. So the good news is, flats are super easy to take. Once you actually learn how to do it and practice doing it, it's pretty darn simple.

00;35;31;20 - 00;35;52;06
Roo
So I want to tell you a few different ways that you can take flats and, we'll do, you know, all the way from free, to what, what I do, which is, I guess you wouldn't say free. It's. But it's very cheap, up to a more high end method that you can do to automate things. More.

00;35;52;08 - 00;36;24;22
Roo
So what you want to do when you're taking a flat is you want to get a a short exposure that fills your Adu, which is your, your histogram essentially at the bottom, if you're in AC air and you see your histogram at the bottom, it'll give you a number. And basically what you're aiming for is between about 25 and 35 K, I usually try to aim for about 30 K whenever I'm taking my flats.

00;36;24;24 - 00;36;54;28
Roo
And it kind of depends on your camera, but most 16 bit cameras, you're going to aim between 25 and 35 K Adu on the actual scale, again, that's anywhere from 35 to 50%. So if you were to take a photo of an evenly lit white surface and you notice that your histogram was pushed all the way to the right of that scale, you knew or you would know that you've overdone it.

00;36;54;28 - 00;37;21;27
Roo
And if it's all the way the left, you haven't done enough. So you want to get it right in the middle. And essentially that is going to be, how you determine how long your exposure should be. Now, the good news is, most modern tools like Pnina and ASI air will automatically calculate how long, the flat needs to be based on how bright the white light that you're looking at is.

00;37;21;29 - 00;37;47;25
Roo
And indeed, you don't even necessarily need to have a separate white light. A lot of people will take what are called sky flats. So if you're in, Twilight where it's, you know, just before the sun rises or sun goes down, for that matter, or just after the sun goes down. Sorry. Or just before the sun rises.

00;37;47;25 - 00;38;10;00
Roo
But you still have, you know, that little bit of light left in the sky? That is a perfect time to take sky flats. So you would aim your telescope directly up at the zenith, so overhead, because that's where you're going to have a nice, evenly lit sky is what you're aiming for. And I will say with this method, you do need to be quick about it.

00;38;10;02 - 00;38;31;24
Roo
You don't want to, you know, take, five flats and then wait five minutes and take ten more. That's the last thing you'd want to do, because the sky's lighting conditions are going to change greatly over ten minutes. So if you're doing it this way, you just need to make sure that you take all of your flats in one group.

00;38;31;26 - 00;38;53;08
Roo
Also, I will say, if I was doing something like taking flats for a two, nine, four where I know they need to be, you know, 2 to 3 seconds each and I want to take 30 to 50 flats. I'm probably not going to do Sky flats because I know that that's probably going to take three minutes or so just to take all the flats.

00;38;53;08 - 00;39;24;29
Roo
And because of that, there's no way that those sky conditions aren't going to change over those three minute. So sky flats probably aren't the ideal way to take your flats, but they are a way that you can take them. So basically, you know, dawn to dusk just before, sunrise or just after sunset when you still got a little bit of light in the sky and a 2 to 3 degrees below the horizon with the sun is what you'd be aiming for.

00;39;25;01 - 00;39;47;06
Roo
And like I say, you you want to take at least 20 flats when you're taking them. I know some people take 30. I have heard of people taking 50. I think 50 is probably overkill. Me personally, I'll generally take between 20 and 30 flats, depending on the project. If I do like a really big project, I'll usually take more just because I feel like more is better.

00;39;47;11 - 00;40;13;03
Roo
But going over 30 probably overkill. So now, outside of those sky flats, the other methods that we have are what is called the, the t shirt method. So this is the one that you've probably seen on YouTube once or twice if you've watched enough channels. But essentially what you can do is get a white t shirt or any white piece of cloth.

00;40;13;03 - 00;40;37;16
Roo
In fact, I've gotten white cloth that I got from Michaels. A yard of it and fold it over on itself once or twice. And, you know, again, depending on your camera, it might need to be 3 or 4 times. Like with my two, nine, four, I had to stack up that cloth, pretty thick for it to be able to take a three second exposure to fill up that 80 to 50%.

00;40;37;19 - 00;41;03;28
Roo
But, you know, for most cameras, you know, 2/10 to 3/10 of a second should get you in that 25 to 35 K range of the 80. You, so put that, t shirt over the objective ones, and then you want to put a very, low brightness but evenly lit light source on top of the t shirt.

00;41;03;28 - 00;41;29;24
Roo
So the obvious one that most people have would be like a tablet. If you have got an iPad, you could put an iPad over it. If it's turned all the way down on the brightness. You obviously would want to have, like a white image on the screen at the time. You can just go to images, dot google.com and search white background and then tap on one of those, turn the brightness down, put it on top of the t shirt.

00;41;29;26 - 00;42;01;22
Roo
And, Robert, your brother's mother. After you do that, you should be good to go. Now, the other method is to actually get a flat panel or a diffuser. And this kind of combines everything into one, easy to use light source. So essentially, it's got the, you know, translucent but very opaque white plastic on it, and then a dimmable white light behind it.

00;42;01;24 - 00;42;23;25
Roo
Now, the easiest way that you can get one of these is to go on Amazon and just look for a, I believe they call them tracing panels. And these are dimmable panels that'll allow you to adjust the brightness up or down. And they've actually gotten a lot better in recent years. When I bought one back in 2022, they weren't the best.

00;42;23;25 - 00;42;49;03
Roo
You had to plug them in with a USB and they weren't super adjustable. Now they're fully wireless, so they're rechargeable with type C, and they dim down very, very dim. So you can get one of those for like 20 bucks online. To me, that's the sweet spot because I don't want to, you know, stretch a t shirt over my telescope and put my iPad on top of it.

00;42;49;05 - 00;43;13;03
Roo
I actually broken I've had once doing just that, on my, 80 millimeter doublet telescope. It actually slipped right off the top. If you are using a tablet, this is probably a good time to mention. Be very careful. You got to be real careful, because obviously you want to, hold the tablet in place so it doesn't slip, but you don't want to, you know, shake it around and move it.

00;43;13;03 - 00;43;34;28
Roo
So the, the flats are, you know, getting messed up, but the the tracing panel works really, really well. And like I said, you can get one of those for 20 bucks. I'll link one like I have in the show notes if you want to pick one up. I think, you know, that's probably the most cost effective way to take your flats.

00;43;35;00 - 00;43;53;08
Roo
And it only takes two minutes to do it with like an AC air or nine. If you use their flat wizard, when you're done. And what I usually do is I will do them, at the beginning of the night. And then if I think about it, I'll do them at the end of the night as well.

00;43;53;08 - 00;44;14;10
Roo
So I have two sets of flats. Sometimes things go wrong and something might happen. Now, usually I'll start with the ones that I think at the end of the night because, you know, if dust lands on the telescope throughout the night, obviously the flats that I took at the end of the night are going to work best to counter out, counteract those dust motes.

00;44;14;13 - 00;44;35;22
Roo
A couple of other things to know about taking flats is that when you take them, you need to keep all of your settings except for the exposure time, the exact same. So you know you want to keep your gain the same. You want to keep the temperature the same. Really important that you keep the framing the same.

00;44;35;22 - 00;45;00;19
Roo
If you rotate your telescope as in the camera for framing, then you need to take new flats. Because once you rotate that camera so you can frame something up differently, any dust spots that are on your objective lens of your telescope are now in a new area when you're looking at the photo. So any time that you know that camera gets rotated, you need to take new flats.

00;45;00;19 - 00;45;22;17
Roo
So just keep that in mind whenever you're doing it. Now the the last type of, flats device that you can take, which is not super cost effective, but it is super automated, would be like an automatic, flip flap or flat cap, whatever you want to call it. I think flip flaps. Probably the funnest thing to call it.

00;45;22;19 - 00;45;47;10
Roo
But there are various companies that basically make caps, that fit the specific size telescope that you have. And some of them, in fact, are adjustable. And if you can find one that's adjustable, I would highly recommend that and buy one that fits the largest aperture of telescope that you have. And then just adjust it down to the smallest one as needed.

00;45;47;12 - 00;46;17;11
Roo
I know deep Sky dad makes a nice quality one parish, friend of the show actually purchased his through deep sky dad, and I believe he said good things about it. They are not cheap, but if you're in a situation where you are shooting remotely, they can be completely invaluable. If you're not wanting to do, Sky flats like we talked about earlier, having access to a, remote flat cap can make all the difference.

00;46;17;11 - 00;46;44;01
Roo
So basically, this is like a motorized cap that you put on the end of your telescope that if you can picture, like a, I don't know, an open mason jar that, opens and closes and has a hinge kind of picture, like a hinged lid coming up and down, and you get the idea. But in that lid, there are evenly lit LED lights that can also turn on remotely.

00;46;44;03 - 00;47;08;19
Roo
So at the end of your session or whenever you want, you can press a button in your remote software to turn that flat cap on and have it cover your objective lens, and then evenly light, the surface. So then you can take your flats, as you normally would with a tracing pad or the sky or a t shirt or whatever.

00;47;08;22 - 00;47;30;07
Roo
You know, you would normally use. Now, the downside here obviously is cost. They are not cheap. I actually looked into just as a, exercise. I said, you know, maybe I could make my own. So I started looking into the, the parts that I would need using like an Arduino and, servos and what have you.

00;47;30;09 - 00;47;54;28
Roo
And I pretty quickly got to well over $100 for just the parts. And while that still is, you know, obviously more affordable than buying a $300 one from like deep Sky dad. Still not cheap. So for now, I'm going to keep using just the basic tracing pad because it works fine for my purposes. But you know, I might change that in the future.

00;47;55;01 - 00;48;22;00
Roo
I'm also planning on, in the spring. I'm wanting to take a trip out to Texas with Parrish. He is actually wanting to set up a second remote rig down at Star Front Observatory. And I'm wanting to put my first remote rig up. So me and him are planning on making that trip together, in the spring time.

00;48;22;00 - 00;48;45;11
Roo
And, you know, at that point, you know, depending on, I don't know, I'll have to look and see. I hear a lot of people do Sky flats there, you know, just remotely taking them of the, the sky at, you know, 530 in the morning or what have you. But I'll look and see what people are doing, and ask around, maybe get on their forum and see what people say.

00;48;45;13 - 00;49;02;21
Roo
But I might end up purchasing one of those in the future. So if and when I do, I'll certainly let you know how that goes. All right. So this is going to be a little bit of a briefer than normal episode this week. Not by much, but just about ten minutes. Just because I have to mow the lawn.

00;49;02;21 - 00;49;25;11
Roo
And somehow I have to, cram recording and mowing the lawn into one afternoon. I'm able to do that because, of course, I am super husband drew. But I will not leave you without making a recommendation. I did recommend Project Hail Mary, to many of you. Well, to all of you last week who listened to the show, and I got some great feedback on that.

00;49;25;11 - 00;49;48;11
Roo
A lot of you guys started reading it, and you're getting it. I'm glad you're getting it because, man, it's such a great novel. It really is. Like I say, the movie comes out in March. It looks like it's just I'm praying that it's going to be great because it looks so highly adaptable to me. It just looks like it would make a great screenplay.

00;49;48;11 - 00;50;18;16
Roo
So we will see. Time will tell. Hopefully they're able to adapt it good. I hope they do justice to Rocky because he's such a great character. But time will tell and we will see. But I wanted to recommend to you, I was trying to think of another really fun read that I enjoyed, and it got me thinking back to some of the stuff that I, read last year and the year prior to that.

00;50;18;18 - 00;50;52;18
Roo
And my sister had actually recommended a particular novel to me after she had listened to it, and I ended up getting super hooked on this particular series. And it's it's like tailor made for a specific type of individual like me. It's definitely, a geeky book. And it's for, you know, if you love, like, RPGs and nerdiness and hackers and computers and all these sorts of things, then it'll probably be up your alley.

00;50;52;18 - 00;51;25;10
Roo
But, the first book, it's a series in a series called magic 2.0. But it's called off to be the Wizard by an author by the name of Scott Meyer. It's a six book, science fiction fantasy series, that he wrote, and it's basically a story about, a computer geek who discovers that reality is actually a computer program, and he is able to reprogram his attributes in the program in real time.

00;51;25;10 - 00;51;48;06
Roo
So I won't spoil anything else beyond that. But needless to say, it's a really, really, really good story. As usual, I highly recommend the audiobook. If you go to audible, you can check that out. It's a really, really great one. And the good news is, like I say, there's six of them. So if you really like the first one, there is a whole lot more where that came from.

00;51;48;06 - 00;52;12;06
Roo
So it's a it's just a great story. It's super fun. If you're looking for something not too heavy, easy to listen to you don't have to, you know, wrack your brain to hard while you're listening to it. Definitely can recommend off to be the wizard. So that is, going to do it for this week. Guys, I thank you so much for tuning in.

00;52;12;09 - 00;52;32;02
Roo
I hope that you are getting plenty of clear skies on this new moon week. I know that tonight is supposed to be clear for me, as is tomorrow night and the night after. So I'm really hoping I'll be able to get those last 15 hours of the Pleiades and share that image with you guys next week when we talk.

00;52;32;05 - 00;52;53;08
Roo
You can always go to facebook.com if you want to check out the latest there. I try to post there pretty regularly. And of course, if you want to keep up with me and the rest of the family, go to Patreon.com forward, slash the Astro cast. If you want to support the show in any other way, I will have the link to all of our, various affiliate programs in the show notes.

00;52;53;10 - 00;53;16;25
Roo
Any purchase that you make through those greatly helps keep the show ad free and just helps with server cost and everything that goes into the production of the show every week. So that is going to do it, for this week's episode of the Astro cast. Thank you so much for tuning in. I am your host, drew, and as always, Clear skies.