I have plotted the mean dark value as function of exposure time from the dark frames obtained night JD2455883. The range of exposure times is 10-200 seconds and thus covers all higher exposure times we might be interested in. No dark current is observed, only the usual scatter due to the 20 minutes period. The period was clearly seen in a plot from the same data of dark count as function of time since first frame.

I think it is safe to say that we no longer have to make dark frames – only bias frames. This will save observing time, and therefore there should be time to ALWAYS obtain a bias frame before and after each science frame or flatfield. This will improve the scaling of the superbias.

The horizontal line in the plot is the mean value of the superbias. It can be seen that it is not in the middle of the scattered dark values. I have seen this before, as well as the opposite with dark values generally being higher than the mean of the supebias. However, in both cases values are within plus/minus 0.5 ADU and the scaling of the superbias means it is not a problem.