Stacking a slightly washed out exposure worth it?

[Amra]

So question is in the title basically.

I am shooting 10 minute exposures of a galaxy all night long and then twilight starts in the morning and the exposures begin to wash out.

So I look through the photos and some are completely washed out & immediately get deleted, but then I see that some of the galaxy core is visible in some exposures but the rest of the picture is still washed out.

Should I keep these exposures or will they completely ruin the entire image stack of the entire night? or is the stacking software advanced enough to still get something out of slightly washed out pictures or am I best off just throwing them away until the sky background looks the same in every subsequent picture?

[hobsey]

I would be inclined to try stacking with and without the washed out images. You may prefer the end result will them if you can see more of the core detail.

[dph1nm]

The optimal way to do it would be to use a weighted stack (so the exposures with the high sky background get less weight). I think DSS will do this, but I have never tried it.

NigelM

[Amra]

Thanks guys, I shall experiment with different stacks.

[Pete Presland]

i would stack any data i take, what have you to loose?  my Rosetta nebula from a year back looked totally washed out, but when processed there was lots of detail there.

[Amra]

i would stack any data i take, what have you to loose?  my Rosetta nebula from a year back looked totally washed out, but when processed there was lots of detail there.

I might have a misconception on how stacking works, but if I take a bad quality sub (washed out, still perfect round stars) and stack it with the rest, does it not degrade the overall stack in any way?

[bogdog]

try manipulating the histogram levels in the washed out images,move sliders to left of histogram to darken to see whats captured before binning them