Spent two years trying to stack astro photos wrong before a random forum post set me straight

I've been shooting the night sky for about 2 years now, mostly from my backyard in Flagstaff. I always thought you had to take super long exposures to get good detail on nebulas, like 5 minutes each. My tracking was always off, stars were trailing, I was getting frustrated. Then last month some guy in the Cloudy Nights forum casually mentioned he shoots 30 second subs and stacks hundreds of them. It clicked immediately. All that time I was fighting my mount for no reason. Has anyone else missed something painfully obvious for way too long?

2 comments

2 Comments

simonl119d ago

Yeah, that whole "long exposures are the only way" thing had me stuck too. I was out there doing 10 minute subs and wondering why my stars looked like little comets. Then a guy in the local astro club said pretty much the same thing - try 45 seconds and stack like 200 of them. It sounded wrong but I tried it and wow, it works way better. The noise averages out and you get way more detail without fighting the mount so hard. I felt stupid for not thinking of it sooner, but at least now I actually get usable images.

the_cole9d ago

Wait, 200 subs? That's like standing outside for like 3 hours to get one usable frame. I thought I was dedicated with stacking maybe 40.