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Told my M31 shot looked like a smear, so I stopped stacking on a laptop in my kitchen
Two years back I posted a pic of M31 in a Facebook group and a guy named Dale just wrote "looks like a smear, your focus is off." Hurt my feelings at the time. I was stacking on an old laptop at the kitchen table, 40 lights at 30 seconds each, no darks, no flats. He told me to check my bahtinov mask before each run and shoot flats with a t-shirt over the lens. I did not know what flats even were. Took me three nights to learn and re-shoot. The next M31 came out with dust lanes you can actually see around the core. Now I still shoot from my driveway in Fort Worth, same cheap rig, but flats and focus checks are non-negotiable. Anybody got a simple way to take flats without a light panel at home?
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jordanprice8d ago
Man, that Dale guy did you a solid even if it stung at the time. For flats without a panel, just lay a white t-shirt or pillowcase over the dew shield and point the scope at an even patch of sky during twilight, like right after sunset before stars show up. Keep the same focus and don't move the camera, then shoot at the same ISO with a slow shutter so the histogram sits in the middle. I've done this from my driveway for years and it works fine once you get the timing down.
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