Spent 6 months thinking I was stacking images wrong on my DSLR

Nancy Thompson · 2026-05-06T05:00:03.675246+00:00

Turns out I wasn't accounting for dithering between frames in my backyard setup near Phoenix, and a guy at an astro meetup pointed out my stars looked like little worms after seeing one of my shots.

matthew8643mo ago

Figured dithering was just a gimmick till I saw my own worm stars and shut up quick.

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noah_webb4mo ago

Man that hurts, I feel your pain. I wasted almost a year with trailing stars before someone told me my polar alignment was off by a few arcminutes. The guy at my local club just laughed and said my stars looked like they were melting. He showed me his rig setup in 10 minutes and fixed everything. Dithering is one of those things nobody tells you about until you mess it up bad.

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uma_webb284mo ago

Read somewhere that even pros sometimes forget dithering screws up their long exposures, so you're in good company.

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