Spent four hours stacking 200 frames of the Andromeda Galaxy last Tuesday and got a gray smudge

I tracked down the Andromeda Galaxy from my backyard in Tucson last Tuesday night. After taking 200 light frames and calibrating them in DSS, the final stacked image looked like a fuzzy gray blob. Three years ago I probably would have deleted it and given up. But this time I made sure to stretch the histogram and use background extraction in Siril. Has anybody else put in hours of work and ended up with a disappointing result that later turned into something decent?

2 comments

2 Comments

jennyp1928d ago

Oh man, that's the worst feeling... staring at a gray blob after hours of work. But yeah, once you stretch those histograms and mess with background extraction, that same blob can turn into something gorgeous.

the_jason28d ago

Haha yeah, total truth right there. My buddy spent like a whole night on a dim galaxy core, convinced he'd messed up the exposure, then one click on the curves tool and suddenly there was spiral arm detail everywhere. Turns out all that "blob time" is just the universe making you earn it.