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Rant: stacking 40 light frames of Andromeda doesn't beat one good single exposure
Last month I shot M31 from a dark site near Borrego Springs and got one 3 minute sub that showed more dust lane detail than 4 hours of stacked frames I took from my backyard in Riverside. Everyone keeps saying just stack more frames but noise averaging can't invent detail that light pollution already ate. Has anyone else ditched the stacking grind and just driven somewhere dark instead?
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the_daniel19d ago
When you say noise averaging can't invent detail that light pollution already ate, that's the part I keep coming back to. What was your sub count and exposure length on the Riverside stack? I'm curious if 4 hours was like 80 x 3min or something shorter, because at 3min subs from a Bortle 7ish backyard you're probably clipping a ton of faint stuff before it ever hits the sensor. Also what were you shooting at, f ratio and gain wise? I ask because a lot of people blame stacking when the real killer is sky glow swamping the signal per sub, and if you went longer subs from home you might close some of that gap. Not saying you're wrong that the dark site sub wins, just trying to figure out where the wall actually is.
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