Thursday 6th September Sol 30

Telescopes on Earth need to measure ‘flat’ and ‘dark’ frames with every set of observations in order to correct for distortions on the telescope mirror and any false detections on the light detector.  Likewise we take flats and dark frames for our ChemCam instrument.  Much of our daily upload commands, like those we have done today, are composed of this sort of procedure to ensure that the quality of our observations is high.  We also have to do housekeeping work like making sure the detectors are working at the correct, low temperatures and that we are not pointing the telescope at the Sun.