I rolled my eyes at those stacked galaxy photos for years

Kept seeing those composite images with like 200 hours of exposure and figured it was just pixel pushing for clout. Then I tried stacking 45 frames of the Orion Nebula with free software and the detail that came out of the noise genuinely surprised me. Anyone else change their mind on processing after actually doing it themselves?

2 comments

2 Comments

kim.dylan23d ago

Nothing wrong with being skeptical about overprocessed images, but what actually clicked for you when you saw your own stack come together? Was it seeing the gas and dust pop out of the noise floor, or just realizing the software does the heavy lifting? I mean, so many people think stacking is just cranking up the saturation, but its really about pulling signal out of the dark. Kinda changes your whole view on what a "real" astrophoto even is, right?

evah4023d agoTop Commenter

Holy crap, @kim.dylan you just made me remember the first time I saw the Andromeda Galaxy slowly appear from all that black nothingness. I thought I had just taken a picture of noise and was about to delete the whole folder. Then after stacking, those dusty spiral arms just materialized like magic and I almost dropped my coffee.