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Stacking 500 frames vs 5 long exposures, the difference surprised me
I spent last Thursday night in Tucson comparing two ways to shoot the Orion Nebula with my 8-inch scope. I took five 3-minute exposures and stacked them in DeepSkyStacker, then took a single 15-minute exposure and stretched it in Siril. The short stack had way more detail in the outer dust clouds, but the long one had smoother color in the core. I kept going back and forth for an hour, but the stacked version won because the noise was so much lower. Has anyone else ditched long exposures entirely after trying a similar comparison?
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felix_bailey4526d ago
Man, I really don't get the whole "ditched long exposures entirely" thing after one night. You spent an hour going back and forth on one target and suddenly the stacked version is the winner? That's a pretty small sample size to be making a big call like that. Different targets respond different ways, and what works for the outer dust clouds on Orion might not hold up on something faint like a galaxy. Plus, a lot of it comes down to the seeing that night and how well your tracking holds up on a 15 minute sub. I'm not saying stacking is wrong, but it's not some clear cut win either. Maybe try this same test on a few more objects before you throw out the long exposure approach completely.
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