A guy at the Kitt Peak visitor center made me reconsider my whole approach to star stacking

I used to just stack as many frames as possible thinking more=better. This older amateur astronomer, Frank, said he only stacks the sharpest 20% of his frames and tosses the rest. He showed me his M31 shot from a 4-inch scope in Arizona that looked better than my 10-inch data with 200 frames. Made me realize quality matters way more than quantity. Anyone else find this to be true with their own processing?

2 comments

2 Comments

diana_park10d ago

I just read an article saying the same thing, sharp frames beat tons of blurry ones every time.

patricia_chen6710d ago

My phone camera is like that too, @diana_park! I took a whole bunch of pictures at my niece's birthday party and only about 10 of them were actually clear. It's like my phone just guesses at the focus or something. Now I just take a few and hope for the best instead of clicking a million times.