I used to think stacking 50 frames was enough for a clean image. I was dead wrong.

I was trying to get the Orion Nebula from my backyard in Phoenix and my shots were always noisy. A guy on a forum said he stacks at least 200 frames for a target like that. I tried it, and the difference was like night and day. The noise just melted away. How many frames do you all usually aim for on a bright target like M42?

3 comments

3 Comments

ellis.susan22d ago

Sounds like a lot of work for a fuzzy space cloud.

wells.olivia22d ago

Yeah, calling it a "fuzzy space cloud" is kind of funny... but I read an article that said the fuzziness is the whole point. It's not just a picture, it's a way to see how gravity works at the edge of a black hole. All that work maps the magnetic fields and the crazy hot gas spinning around. It shows how stuff actually behaves in that kind of extreme place. So the fuzziness is the data, basically.

barbarah1922d ago

Right, "a lot of work for a fuzzy space cloud." I mean, they pointed a bunch of telescopes the size of a planet at nothing for a week to get that fuzz. It's the most expensive blurry photo in history. They basically built a camera to see a shadow at the edge of forever, and we're all here calling it a dust bunny. Kind of puts my bad phone pics into perspective.