Stacking 100 short exposures beat my single 5-minute shot every time

I spent six months taking single long exposures of the Orion Nebula thinking that was the only way to get detail. Then a guy at the local observatory showed me his setup where he stacks 30 second shots instead. I tried it with 100 frames on M42 and the difference was night and day way less noise and way more nebula structure. Has anyone else found that stacking short subs outperforms long exposures for bright targets?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_susan5h agoTop Commenter

Oh man yes, this is exactly what happened to me with the Ring Nebula. I spent like a whole summer on an hour long single exposure, stacking 15 minute subs, and the core was just blown out. Switched to 200 thirty second frames using my DSLR and the detail in the center ring came out so crisp I almost cried. Short subs definitely let you pull out way more of that inner structure without losing the faint outer shell. It feels wrong at first not going long but the math works out way better for bright stuff like nebulae.

the_susan4h agoTop Commenter

Right?! The seeing actually matters more than the total time for bright targets.