Hated star stacking composites until someone pointed out my single exposures had way too much noise at ISO 3200

A guy on the Cloudy Nights forum said my Orion Nebula shots looked like they were taken through a snowstorm and suggested I try 30 shorter frames instead of one long one, so I spent last night stacking 45 seconds each and the difference was night and day. Has anyone else had that humbling moment where one piece of feedback totally changed your processing workflow?

2 comments

2 Comments

grantw4111d ago

Opened up PixInsight and ran the SubframeSelector process on my old single exposures and saw the SNR was terrible compared to the stacked ones. That moment where you realize you've been fighting noise for years and the fix is just more shorter subs really stings. I still go back and reprocess old targets sometimes just to see how much better they look with proper stacking. Its crazy how one person saying "your stars look like cotton balls" can flip your whole approach around.

leor8611d ago

Wait, you ran SubframeSelector on old single exposures? I didn't even know you could do that after the fact, that's wild. So you literally just opened up your old raw files and PixInsight told you they were garbage? @grantw41 I have to try that with my old M31 shots. I always thought my tracking was just bad but now I'm wondering if it was the stacking the whole time.