My dad dropped by my observatory last weekend and stopped me mid-frame

He said my photos all looked like they were taken through a frosted window because I kept stacking too many frames. I was getting 200 exposures on M31 and he told me to cut it to 60 and focus on quality light instead. Now I'm wondering if I've been overprocessing this whole time and how many good nights I wasted. Has anyone else had a family member point out something that made you rethink your whole editing workflow?

3 comments

3 Comments

riley_miller2515d ago

Have you tried just taking fewer but longer subs to test the difference? I used to push 300+ frames too until someone told me to chill out and the results actually got sharper.

riley_miller2515d ago

Wait so are you saying you literally cut your total integration time in half or just spread the same total time across fewer frames? Because Ive been going back and forth on this with my 8" dob and I swear longer subs give me way more walking noise issues unless I babysit the guiding constantly. Like I went from 30 sec subs to 90 sec subs and halved my frame count but the background came out splotchy as hell. What mount are you running because I feel like that makes or breaks this whole strategy honestly.

stellaa6915d ago

Yeah but the guy's original post was saying his dad told him to cut total frames, not sub length, so you're mixing up two different things there. Longer subs can totally work if your tracking and guiding are dialed in, but if you're fighting walking noise on 90 second exposures your polar alignment is probably off or your mount just can't handle it. It's not really about more or fewer frames, it's about finding that sweet spot where your signal to noise ratio is good without drowning the data in read noise or star bloat.