Tried stacking my camera shots with free software and ended up with what looks like a blurry picture of a ghost

Spent three hours aligning 200 frames of the Orion Nebula only to realize I forgot to turn off the tracking error correction and now it just looks like a fuzzy blob from a horror movie, has anyone else had a processing tool completely wreck their best data set?

3 comments

3 Comments

charles44221d agoMost Upvoted

Did you double-check the drizzle settings before stacking? Sometimes that default pattern noise reduction can totally kill the signal if it's set too aggressive.

susan13021d ago

Well, at least you've got a great Halloween screensaver now.

the_mila21d ago

Used to think drizzle settings were just a waste of time honestly. @susan130 the screensaver comment actually got me laughing because I had the exact same thing happen last week. Charlie is spot on with the default pattern noise reduction though, I always turned it off without even thinking about it. Started experimenting with the drizzle settings after someone explained it to me and now I never skip it. The difference in final image quality is night and day, definitely worth the extra processing time.