Multiple night image processing?

[Mattjohnson1978]

I have been enjoying the recent purchase of my Canon DSLR and been photographing everything I can find. I now want to pick targets and take as many images as possible to produce the highest quality possible. With the short summer (and I use that term very loosely!) nights, I was wondering what the normal protocol was when shooting the same target over different nights with regards to flats and darks. For a single nights imaging, I would collect the darks and flats with my lights and then process them through IRIS. How would I process images from 2 different sittings? Would you combine all the lights, darks and flats into the same folder and let the software sort it out or would you calibrate all respective images with their own offsets and then merge the 2 images?

Any help would be appreciated

Matt

[swag72]

If you use DSS for stacking, you can stack seperate nights and then DSS combines them into one. So you would have lights, darks and flats from one session, add them to DSS, then at the bottom of the stacking window, there's a tag where you can add another nights data and so on. It will then ensure that the darks and flats are only stacked with their respective lights.

[Mattjohnson1978]

Thanks Sara. I haven't used DSS yet. The only reason I know what yo do with IRIS is because it was spoon-fed to me by a book lol. Is there any tutorials you can recommend for DSS?

Matt

[swag72]

Have a look here http://flintstonestargazing.com/2009/06/26/my-quick-deepskystacker-tutorial/ or http://asignobservatoryii.webs.com/tutorials.htm

Both found using a Google search, so if they're not what you are after I'm sure there's loads more out there.

Hope that helps .

[Mattjohnson1978]

Thank you for your help...I will check them out.

The quality of your photos look awesome by the way. I would be over the moon (no pun intended) if I managed to get close to that level!

[Zendrix]

I saw this link a while ago... I've been using most of the solutions he suggests and the stacking has been very good in all cases. https://docs.google.com/file/d/0ByZXuV0vUfw7Nzk1ZTJmNmItOWRjZS00OGYxLWFiMzEtYzFjMzkyN2IyYjdl/edit?hl=en_US&pli=1

Cheers,

Rui

[Mattjohnson1978]

Good stuff, thanks Rui!!