Last week I tried stacking 3 hours of moon shots and it was a hot mess

I thought I'd get this killer high-res moon image by combining 2000 frames from my Celestron in my backyard near Denver. Instead I spent 3 hours in PIPP and Autostakkert only to end up with this blurry, overprocessed blob that looked like a bad watercolor. My buddy who does deep sky stuff said I probably had too much atmospheric turbulence that night. Has anyone else found a sweet spot for lunar stacking where you don't waste an entire evening? I'm wondering if there's a better technique for city skies.

2 comments

2 Comments

wilson.jesse29d ago

The whole thing about chasing perfect results in astronomy reminds me of how people expect one magic fix to solve everything when really it's a bunch of small variables adding up. I mean, stacking 2000 frames sounds great on paper but if the air is wobbly you're just combining a lot of bad data into one bigger mess. Maybe it's like that saying about garbage in, garbage out - the best processing in the world can't fix what the atmosphere already ruined.

haydenburns29d ago

Yeah but you've gotta love the people who swear by that one $300 filter that'll fix all their problems... like yeah buddy, that plastic disc isn't gonna do anything about the jet stream dumping a wave of turbulence right over your dome. I've seen guys drop thousands on a fancy mount and then set it up on a wobbly patio deck, stacking frames of garbage and wondering why their Saturn looks like a melted tire. It's always funny to me how we'll blame everything except the obvious - bad seeing, bad sky, bad light pollution from the neighbor's new floodlight. But hey, at least the stacking software makes a nice little progress bar so we can watch our disappointment build in real time, right?