Stacking vs. single exposure debate after my Andromeda shot came out muddy
I spent weeks taking 2-minute subs and stacking them in DSS, got a decent galaxy but a ton of noise. Then my buddy just took one 5-minute exposure with a cheaper camera and his came out sharper. Is stacking really always better for deep sky or is it just overkill for bright targets like the core of M31?
Yeah my first stack of M31 looked like someone dropped a burger in the mud and called it art. 12 hours of 90 second subs and still had that gross green noise everywhere. I actually switched to taking just 3 or 4 longer exposures like 5 to 8 minutes each and then tossing them in Sequator instead of DSS. Way less headache and the galaxy core actually looks like a galaxy and not a blurry smudge. Stacking is great if you live under Bortle 1 skies with a cooled camera but for the rest of us regular folks a single clean sub might beat 100 noisy ones haha.