Finally tried stacking 10 minutes of subs instead of 2 and wow

I've been doing 30-second exposures for my Orion shots for months and getting okay results. Last week I tried 2-minute subs for 10 minutes total on the Orion Nebula and the difference in detail on those dust lanes is unreal. Was it worth the extra guiding setup time or do you guys stick with shorter exposures? I'm in a Bortle 5 zone near Denver if that matters.

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derek_ramirez1mo ago

Ha, right? More time soaking = way better dust lanes, no contest.

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graceprice1mo ago

Oh man, that's such a good point about the dust lanes! I have a similar story that's totally unrelated but kind of fits. So I was trying to get a decent shot of the Andromeda Galaxy last fall and I kept doing 15 second exposures because I was too lazy to polar align properly. After like three nights of frustration I finally set up the guiding and did 3 minute subs for about 20 minutes total and holy cow the difference in the core detail was just insane. It's like night and day when you let the sensor soak up that light for longer. But now I'm paranoid about my tracking being off by even a tiny bit, you know? I guess with shorter subs you get more frames to stack and less chance of ruining a whole session if your mount hiccups. Still, that extra detail is hard to argue with when you see it side by side.

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