I think the obsession with super long exposures on deep sky objects is overrated

I set up my tracker for a 5-hour session on the Orion Nebula, and honestly, the final stack looked muddy compared to a cleaner 45-minute one I did last month. I learned that more integration time isn't always better if your seeing conditions aren't perfect. Has anyone else found a sweet spot for exposure length before the returns diminish?

3 comments

3 Comments

seth_carr21d ago

Is @the_felix basically saying I wasted 5 hours just to prove his point? Because yeah, my 90-minute Orion stack from a decent night looked way better than that 5-hour mess. I kept thinking, "This time it'll work, the sky will cooperate" - spoiler, it didn't. Maybe I should just stick to 90 minutes and stop trying to outlast the atmosphere.

the_felix2mo ago

Your muddy 5-hour stack was probably from bad seeing, not the total exposure time itself.

grace_fox32mo ago

Ugh, tell me about it. I once spent a whole night on the Andromeda galaxy, convinced more time meant more detail. The final image looked like I shot it through a bowl of soup. @the_felix is right, it's all about the conditions. My sweet spot is usually around 90 minutes now. After that, if the sky isn't rock solid, I'm just stacking blur. Feels like a waste of a good sleep schedule.