lopez.holly•11d agoProlific Poster

Serious question, I compared stacking 50 vs 200 frames for the Orion Nebula

I finally got a clear night last week and decided to test something. I shot the Orion Nebula with my 6-inch scope and dedicated camera. For the first set, I stacked 50 light frames. It was okay, you could see the shape and some color. Then I stacked 200 frames from the same session. The difference wasn't just a little better, it was huge. The noise in the background sky was almost gone, and the faint outer gas clouds popped out with way more detail. I spent maybe an extra hour capturing those frames, but the processing was so much easier because the signal was cleaner. I used the same dark and flat frames for both stacks, so the only real variable was the number of lights. Has anyone else hit a point where more frames just made everything click? I'm curious if there's a sweet spot for different targets.

2 comments

2 Comments

john_dixon6111d ago

Yeah, I had that exact thing happen with the Andromeda galaxy. Stacked 80 frames and it was a noisy mess, then pushed it to 250 and the whole spiral arm structure just snapped into view. The extra integration time really does smooth out the background like nothing else.

sam53011d ago

But is it really worth the extra time? Seems like a lot of work for a bit more detail.