Stacking 200 frames beat my single 90 second shot by a mile

Last month I was so proud of this single exposure of the Orion Nebula, 90 seconds on my DSLR and it looked decent on the camera screen. But a guy on the discord channel kept telling me I was leaving half the detail on the table if I didn't stack. I finally caved and spent a whole evening taking 200 frames at 15 seconds each, then ran them through DeepSkyStacker. First result looked like noise soup, but after I watched a tutorial on the calibration frames and did flat and dark frames, the final image was way sharper. The nebula actually has that red and blue color, not just a gray blob. I had avoided stacking for months because I thought it was too much work, but it took maybe an hour of YouTube learning and it's not that bad. Has anyone else found that the free software gives you a surprising boost, or do you pay for something like PixInsight? I'm curious if it's worth it for my old camera setup.

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jadej501mo ago

Did you shoot your calibration frames at the same temperature as the lights?

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the_parker1mo ago

That gray blob line hit home, I was the same way until I tried stacking once and never looked back.

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