I just realized I've been stacking my astro photos wrong for two years

I was looking at a shot of the Orion Nebula from a guy in my local club, and his dust lanes were way clearer than mine. He asked what software I used for stacking, and I told him DeepSkyStacker with the default settings. He laughed and said 'You're just averaging the noise, man.' He showed me his workflow using pixel rejection in Siril, and it was like a fog lifted. All my old data from my backyard in Austin is basically useless now. Anyone have a good guide for re-processing a whole library of raw files?

4 comments

4 Comments

paul_taylor212mo ago

DeepSkyStacker defaults are fine for a lot of people though. That guy's backyard probably just has darker skies than Austin. I doubt all your old data is actually useless.

dakotab932mo ago

Wait, so you think DSS is fine even with light pollution?

david_jones382mo ago

My old data is mostly just pictures of my neighbor's porch light.

victor_robinson6d ago

Notice this same thing happens with basically every hobby I've ever tried. People get super focused on the expensive gear or advanced techniques when most of the progress comes from just practicing more in reasonably decent conditions. Same reason why someone with a cheap grill can still make a better steak than the guy with the $5,000 setup if they just know how to control the heat. Your old data probably has more usable signal than you think once you strip away all the fussing over settings.