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I always thought stacking photos was just for the pros
For years I just took single shots of the night sky with my camera and called it good, figuring stacking was too hard. Then a guy in our local astronomy group in Flagstaff showed me his process using DeepSkyStacker, and the difference was huge. He took 30 two-minute exposures of the Orion Nebula and stacked them, and the detail was so much cleaner than my single five-minute shot. I tried it myself last month with 20 frames of the Andromeda Galaxy, and the noise just vanished. Now I won't even process a photo without stacking at least 15 frames first. What's the minimum number of frames you all find you need to make it worth the time?
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haydenp9521d ago
Honestly ten is my bare minimum, fifteen feels way safer.
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dylanward2mo ago
My old rule was 10 frames minimum for anything, but I've found 15 is the sweet spot for my camera. Anything less and the noise reduction just isn't convincing enough to justify the processing time. I'll even do 30 or 40 for really faint targets like the Horsehead Nebula.
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