Spent 6 months stacking my telescope photos wrong, figured it out by accident

Tbh I've been into astrophotography for about a year now but I kept getting these blurry stacked images of the Orion Nebula. I tried everything from better tracking to longer exposures and nothing clicked. Then last week I noticed my stacking software had a checkbox for 'drizzle' that I assumed was just for fancy upscaling so I never used it. Turns out drizzle actually helps fix those tiny alignment errors between frames and my latest stack came out way sharper. Has anyone else missed a simple setting in their processing workflow that made a huge difference?

2 comments

2 Comments

emma68417d ago

Drizzle is one of those things that sounds too technical to matter until you see the difference it makes. I ignored it for months too, figured it was just for people with super expensive gear.

the_kevin17d ago

What software are you even using? @emma684 is right that drizzle sounds way more technical than it actually is - once you figure out it's basically just fixing pixel alignment, it's a total game changer. I had the same thing with my lunar shots until I accidentally turned on a sub-pixel setting and wondered why everything suddenly looked twice as sharp.