Rant: My deep sky shot got ruined by a single passing airplane last weekend

I drove 2 hours out to a dark site near Kernville last Saturday to finally get a clean Andromeda shot. Set up my rig at 9 PM, got everything aligned after maybe 45 minutes. Then at 1 AM during my 300th sub exposure, a plane flies right through the frame with its strobe lights blinking. That single frame ruined the whole stack because the light streak was so bright it messed up my background calibration. I spent like 3 hours trying to mask it out in processing but the gradient was just too bad. Has anyone found a solid method to salvage stacks when a single frame has a bright plane trail?

3 comments

3 Comments

grantf732mo agoMost Upvoted

That 1 AM plane streak is rough... I used to think stacking software could handle just about anything, but a bright strobe light trail taught me different after I lost a whole night on the Rosette Nebula last winter. Now I just toss any frame with a visible trail and shoot more subs to compensate.

the_mary2mo ago

It's like the universe conspires against you after all that setup work. That's just the way stuff goes sometimes, one little thing can just mess up a whole plan. I had something similar happen when I was trying to get a clean shot of the Orion Nebula and a satellite just drifted right through the middle of my best frame.

the_robert1mo ago

Toss those frames without thinking twice. I've started shooting 20-30% more subs than I think I'll need on any given night, just to have a safety buffer for stuff like this. A satellite streak is annoying but at least you caught it early enough to not waste more time on that frame. Better to lose one sub than try to fix it in post and end up with a worse result.