Player One Poseidon M camera showing clustered hot pixels in dark frames

Player One Poseidon-M Pro CMOS Dark Frames Artifacts Help Needed Hot Pixels Troubleshooting
4 replies•127 views
lunohodov avatar
lunohodov avatar

Hello everybody,

I recently bought a Player One Poseidon M camera (analogous to ZWO’s ASI2600-M Pro). The camera hasn't had its first light yet, because the weather has been bad and the filters haven’t arrived yet. However, I took bias and dark frames (-10°C, Gain 125, offset 10, Low Noise mode) and analyzed those.

While the bias frames look fine, the darks exhibit brighter-than-usual pixels that are clustered together. The clusters appear on dark frames with somewhat longer exposures (> 60 seconds) and are amplified when stacked.

📷 poseidon-m-darks.pngposeidon-m-darks.pngAs you can see in the following image, there are quite a few of these.

📷 masterDark-300s-overview.pngmasterDark-300s-overview.png

My understanding is that these imperfections will be present in other frame types (light, flat, and flat darks) but should be corrected during calibration. Is my thinking correct? Am I missing something?

Should I contact Player One support and request a replacement, or is there nothing to worry about?

I’ve shared the raw and master frames and appreciate your advice.

Clear skies!

Well Written Engaging
andrea tasselli avatar
andrea tasselli avatar
A sample of four isn't enough to establish correlations but I see nothing abnormal and all these warm pixels will be duly taken care of during pre-processing (e.g. via CosmeticCorrection). Use at least 20 frames for each master dark would be my advice.
Well Written Helpful Concise
lunohodov avatar
lunohodov avatar

I do take 50 dark and around 100 bias subframes for the masters. Though I uploaded only a subset.

Until now, I’ve only seen individual but not several hot pixels clustered together. Maybe the best I can do now is wait for good weather, then do an end-to-end test.

Thanks again, Andrea!

Clear skies

andrea tasselli avatar
andrea tasselli avatar
The job of dark frame subtraction is to take care of those pesky hot pixels, clustered or not. Drifting and/or dithering will do the rest.
Well Written
alpheratz06 avatar
alpheratz06 avatar

This will be handled by calibration. No reason to be alerted at that point.

Related discussions
Gradient in dark frames
Hi everyone! I recently bought the Player One Poseidon C Pro camera and after a very long period of cloudy nights it finally cleared and I got to try it. When taking the lights everything was normal. When the sun rose again the pictures got very satu...
Both posts describe unexpected image quality issues encountered with newly acquired Player One Poseidon cameras during initial testing or use.
Mar 5, 2026
Flats undercorrecting vignetting
Hello all! I'm facing issues trying to calibrate my light frames with flats, they seem to be undercorrecting the vignetting on the frame: The equipment I'm using is the following: - Modificated Sky-Watcher Quattro 250P OTA - Sharpstar 1x GPU ...
Both posts describe technical issues or anomalies encountered during the initial setup and testing of new astronomical imaging cameras.
Aug 6, 2025
Collaboration wanted to image the entire Milky Way plane
Would anyone be interested in a collaboration to image the entire plane of the Milky Way? I have already completed the Southern Milky Way plane using a Sigma Art 40mm and ASI2400MC full frame sensor. By orienting each field so the plane was parallel ...
Both posts discuss experiences with astronomical imaging equipment and cameras used for astrophotography.
Sep 8, 2025
Odd "circle" in imagery when taking photos
Hi all, Starting with: This is a 12” newtonian (1200mm), with a Poseidon-M connected to 50mm (round) filters and an OAG-MAX (with a coma corrector) - 56mm back focus So I’ve been banging my head against a wall trying to figure out what this is… I fir...
Both posts discuss technical issues or observations with the Player One Poseidon M camera used in astronomical imaging.
24 days ago