Took me 3 tries to realize I was stacking my star photos all wrong

I've been messing with astrophotography for a couple months now and kept getting these weird blurry stars. I thought it was my cheap tripod or maybe the wind. Then last week I watched a YouTube video from a guy in Arizona who pointed out that you need to do the alignment step manually if your camera doesn't have a built-in intervalometer. I had been just shooting and hoping for the best. Turns out I was missing like 80 percent of usable frames because they didn't line up. After I started using DeepSkyStacker with manual star selection on individual frames, the difference was night and day. My orion nebula shot from last friday actually looks like a real photo now. Has anyone else had that moment where you realize the stacking software needs more input from you than you thought?

2 comments

2 Comments

nancy2751mo ago

Honestly that Arizona guy sounds like he knows what he's talking about. I read somewhere that even with a solid mount you can still mess up stacking if the software can't find the stars right, and you gotta babysit the process more than people let on. Tbh my first attempts were a mess too until I figured out the manual alignment part.

thomas_young1mo ago

Ngl that's just like trying to fix anything techwise - you always gotta mess with it yourself first.