I always thought stacking 20 photos was enough for deep sky stuff

I mean, I'd been doing that for like a year and my Andromeda shots were always kinda noisy. Last month I saw a post where someone stacked 80 frames for the Orion Nebula and the difference was crazy. So I tried it on my own rig, spending a whole night just on the Pleiades. I took 90 two-minute subs instead of my usual 20. The final image after stacking in DeepSkyStacker was so much smoother, the background was way darker. It's a huge time commitment but it actually works. Has anyone else pushed past 50 frames and noticed a real drop-off in improvement?

2 comments

2 Comments

diana_black2d ago

Yeah, I stacked 120 frames for the Horsehead once and the noise just melted away. Where do you even stop, right?

sam_thomas2d ago

Totally get that. Hit 200 on the Orion Nebula last month and it just kept getting smoother. Feels like you could stack forever.