big-guy Loc: Peterborough Ontario Canada

I am familiar with focus and exposure stacking but am at a loss for the procedure for astronomical stacking. Can someone give me a brief description of what you are doing? Just the basics as I can figure out the details once I have a grasp of the concept. Thanks.

SonnyE Loc: Communist California, USA

Well, Peter, until the real stackers arrive, I can offer my >one< successful attempt. :oops:
There are several programs designed around Astronomy photograph stacking.
RegiStax 6, Deep Sky Stacker, AutoStakkert, are 3 I know of that members here use.
My successful attempt was with RegiStax 6 Version 6.1.0.8
JimH123 has posted successes with DSS, Deep Sky Stacker
And Jim in Albuquerque (Albuqshutterbug) shoots video strings and uses the AutoStakkert program a lot.

Oh, and another I used when shooting Star Trails And my limited success rate. :-P Lots of Friends can to help.

So hopefully one of those can be of help?
(Until the real cavalry arrives...) ;)

But these programs will align and stack a series of photographs to bring out details generally not discernible in the unstacked single versions.
Only recently was I able to get a series stacked successfully.

big-guy Loc: Peterborough Ontario Canada

Thanks, I have a general understanding of the process and have downloaded Deep Sky Stacker to test.

SonnyE Loc: Communist California, USA

Alrighty then.
I hope it works good for you. ;)

Albuqshutterbug Loc: Albuquerque NM

If you intend to shoot video I highly recommend the latest version of Autostakkert2. It does an outstanding job of stacking planets and can be set to transfer into Registax6 to do the channel sharpening. My avatar was done from this combination.
Good luck and welcome to our corner of the hog.

JimH123 Loc: Morgan Hill, CA

Even the default settings for DSS will do a great job. The more images you stack, the better the image will turn out. The images are called "light frames". "dark frames" can be added and are real easy to make. Just put the cap on the lens and take a number of images with the same settings. There are several more kinds of frames, but you can start with these two.

Just to give you a taste of what this kind of stack can do, I am going to post a before (one of 6 images) and an after of M81, Bodes Nebula (Galaxy)

You can see that the faint stars are much brighter.
Noise is reduced.
And the galaxy has really popped out of the dim background

Stacking really works!

One of the "before" images

(Download)

An "after" image

(Download)

big-guy Loc: Peterborough Ontario Canada

Very cool, thanks.