Hit 500 hours of exposure on one deep sky object. Worth it or waste?

I just crossed 500 hours of total exposure time on a single galaxy from my backyard in Ohio. That's like six months of clear nights stacked together. Some folks say you hit diminishing returns after 100 hours and should move on. Others argue the extra data pulls out details you just can't get otherwise. Has anyone else pushed past 300 hours on one target and actually saw something new?

3 comments

3 Comments

king.val1mo agoMost Upvoted

Yikes, I'd need a therapist after 500 hours of staring at a smudge, and @baker.holly probably took less time to find that gradient trick.

dylan_brown301mo ago

Wait until you reprocess that 500 hour stack with a new technique... sometimes the real gains come from better processing instead of more data.

baker.holly1mo ago

Oh man, totally been there. Spent a YEAR on a dataset only to realize a simple gradient stretch brought out twice the detail.