Just realized stacking 50 frames instead of 10 made my Orion shot way clearer

I was trying to get a good picture of the Orion Nebula from my backyard in Tucson last month, but my first tries looked really grainy. I was only stacking about 10 light frames because I was impatient. After reading a forum tip, I forced myself to take 50 frames over two clear nights. The difference was huge. The nebula's reds and blues popped way more, and the background sky looked smooth and dark instead of noisy. The extra data from those 40 frames let the software average out all the random camera sensor noise. It took longer to process on my old laptop, maybe 20 minutes, but it was totally worth it. Has anyone else found a specific number of frames that seems to be the sweet spot for deep sky objects?

3 comments

3 Comments

lopez.brooke3mo ago

Fuzzy space cloud"... that's a new one. I guess my whole hobby is just taking pictures of blurry lint in the sky. But hey, at least my lint is a smooth, dark, and colorful lint now.

adamellis3mo ago

Way clearer" is a bit much, it's still just a fuzzy space cloud. But yeah, 50 frames does sound better than 10 if you've got the time.

oliver_mitchell2mo ago

Read a guide that said 30 frames is the bare minimum for a clean shot, but 50 to 100 is where you really start to kill the noise. My own test on the Andromeda galaxy showed the same thing. Twenty frames still had that speckled gray background, but sixty made it look like smooth black velvet. The extra integration time just lets the software work its magic. More data always wins.