Tried stacking 200 photos of the Orion Nebula and got a blurry mess instead

I spent like 3 hours taking 200 shots of Orion through my 6 inch Dobsonian with just a phone adapter. Stacked them in DeepSkyStacker and the nebula came out all smeared and weird. Turns out my tracking was off by a tiny bit each time and it added up. Has anyone fixed drift issues without buying a full tracking mount?

3 comments

3 Comments

jenny471mo ago

Yeah, saying "tracking was off by a tiny bit each time" is actually the whole problem right there. Even a small drift in a Dobsonian with no motor will wreck stacking because each frame is shifted slightly. You can't really fix that without some kind of tracking, even a cheap motorized mount. What might help a little is taking shorter exposures, like 2-3 seconds max, and just getting way more of them. Or try the "lucky imaging" method where you take video and stack the sharpest frames. But honestly, without tracking, DSO stacking is gonna be a constant fight.

olivia_moore1mo ago

Yeah I was watching a deep sky video the other day and the guy said even a $100 motorized mount makes a massive difference for DSOs. Without it you're basically fighting physics the whole time.

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the_elliot1mo ago

Yeah that drift stuff is brutal. It's like trying to stack papers while someone is slowly pulling the tablecloth out from under them. Kinda reminds me of my dad trying to fix a leaky faucet - tightening one screw just makes another one start dripping somewhere else lol. You're basically playing whack-a-mole with physics. Short exposures and lucky imaging could help a bit but honestly you'll just end up with a slightly less blurry mess. The real fix is spending money or giving up on DSOs until you do.