One shot colour cameras - Why is the data is always mono when you first get it??

Why is my colour data set in black and white, is this correct?

This is a question we get asked a lot. The frames from the One Shot Colour camera’s in their raw state do indeed come down in black and white. This is perfectly normal. As part of the pre-processing your data will need to be calibrated using the Bias, Darks and Flat frames available to download from your Dashboard on the website.

Once calibrated you need to convert them to colour using the Debayer tool in software like Pixinsight, Deepsky Stacker, Maxim dl. After this stage the frames can be aligned and stacked to create your Stacked Raw colour image. It may still look very dark as the data held in this file needs to be processed to bring the brightness levels into a range where your screen or monitor can see it.

I hope this very basic explanation helps give you a kick start into the dark art of image processing.

Happy imaging

Peter Shah