A simple trick finally got me a clear shot of the Orion Nebula

For years, my pictures of M42 were just a fuzzy gray blob, no matter how long I left the shutter open. I tried stacking dozens of images, but it never helped. The problem was my camera's internal noise reduction, which I never turned off. A friend in my local astronomy club in Boise told me to just switch it off in the menu and take dark frames separately. I tried it last Tuesday with my old Canon T3i, taking 30 light frames and 15 dark frames. When I stacked them in DeepSkyStacker, the difference was amazing. The nebula's pink and blue colors actually showed up for the first time. I felt like I finally understood a basic piece of the puzzle. Has anyone else found that one small setting made a huge difference in their deep sky photos?

3 comments

3 Comments

hunt.kevin21d ago

That dark frame trick is huge. It's wild how much heat from your own camera sensor can ruin a long exposure.

benbrown21d ago

Totally feel that, my first attempts looked like a gray potato. @hunt.kevin is right, it's crazy how much the camera itself gets in the way.

beth_sanchez8d ago

How long does your camera need to cool down before that dark frame trick actually works?