Weird red pixels

[kljucd1]

I keep on getting these weirdly shaped pixels when trying to do widefield. While I don't yet understand 100% the whole stacking darks process, I have tried this and it doesn't process out these pixels. They are always red. In fact for most of my images the - for lack of a better term - noise is often mostly red.

I discarded the astro widefield images where I was getting this but I have attached a scaled down copy of an original image from some ISO testing I was doing tonight - what else is there to do when it's raining - as well as a zoomed in snip of the original.

The camera is a Pentax K20D. Often, when I get this issue, I am using my Pentax 17-70 SDM lens or a Tamron SP AF Di 90mm Macro. While I don't usually get such pronounced red pixels when using my SW ED80 Pro/WO ZenithStar 66 the red noise issue usually shows up. In all cases we are talking exposure times of ~5-30 seconds.

Hopefully I have included enough information?

[bojan]

Those are hot pixels..

You need to use darks (http://deepskystacker.free.fr/english/faq.htm) to get rid of them...



BTW, could it be radioactive glass?


Red halo looks like it's caused by chromatic aberration...


EDIT: Originally I mentioned "flats" instead of "darks"... what I have been thinking :screwy:?

[kljucd1]

Thanks for the link it has a bunch of useful information, funnily enough :P

I'm not sure about whether the glass is radioactive. Is there an easy way to tell? It doesn't have the yellow tinge the glass on my old super takuma 50mm has. I googled it and couldn't find any information.

[glend]

Flats may not be necessary, being more useful for dirty optics, filter artifacts, etc. If you use DSS for stacking there are option boxes to tick for hot/cold pixel removal. You do need to use Bias and Darks.

[bojan]

Yep, I corrected myself in my post... I was thinking darks, but typed flats :screwy:

[Sunfish]

On my Pentax KS2 I can run a hot pixel check and the camera updates and removes them automatically. I saw the same thing until I removed them this way and then do an update occasionally. Check the manual.

[sil]

having the camera make adjustments is not desirable ever. proper preprocessing with darks and bias frames etc is better and more accurate without adding extra artifacts to the images.

[Sunfish]

I am not sure the camera altering the image file in this case. It simply turns off recording of any pixels which are faulty by in camera testing and passes that information to the image processing software as far as I know. Fairly standard practice for any DSLR. Happy to be corrected by anyone who has more actual informed and detail knowledge of DNG files and their complexities.

Even long shutter speed noise reduction which applies a matching dark frame for each shot works just as well as DSS I think if you are patient. All other adjustments I turn off but some still use in camera high iso noise reduction at low level. Depends a lot I think on the camera and it’s sensor and systems.