Deep sky astrophotography was a total scam in my head until I stacked 30 frames of M31

I used to think those beautiful galaxy photos were just fancy processing tricks on mediocre data. Then I spent a night shooting Andromeda with a used Canon T3i and a sky tracker, stacked 30 x 90-second exposures in DSS, and the detail in the dust lanes blew my mind. Anyone else start out doubting what stacking can actually pull out of a single frame?

2 comments

2 Comments

michaelrodriguez9d ago

My first real attempt at M31 I only stacked 12 frames and was honestly disappointed with the noise still left behind. Bumping it up to around 40 subs really showed me that more data makes all the difference in pulling out those faint dust lanes. That moment of seeing the structure come through clearly in the final stack is what got me hooked on the whole process.

charles_green4d ago

@michaelrodriguez sounds like a lot of work just to see some dust.