Warning looking at this may damage your eyeballs.

[MilwaukeeLion]

This weekend we had 85% humidity (Costa Rica met frozen turndra) so I thought what a perfect time to try my first shot at M31.  I took 120 lights, 20 darks & 20 bias with 200mm lens (300mm with my Sony APSC), 30 sec each (except for the bias), f4, ISO 1600. I was using polar aligned Skytracker which did a good job with very little movement over the entire session.  So DSS refuses to stack my raw frames, at first didn't detect any stars, made adjustments and it detected over 100k, made more adjustments and it detected 10,000.  No matter how many it refuses me.  Even converted them to Tiff and made adjustments then brought them in, still will only stack one frame of 120.

After combing through posts and online for anwsers, im guessing my focus and or ISO settings are the main hurdle here with DSS?  Below is a raw, the final registax stacked image and a raw I adjusted best I could in lightroom. 

Anyway, I got frustrated and brought the raws into After Effects, converted to AVI and ran through Registax hoping it would think it was a planet and stack them.  It did stack them and gave me a finished product but not sure what to do with the darks and bias in Registax if I can do anything to improve this at all?  Perhaps there is no improving it due to focus?  I'm unfamiliar with using PS & DSS even though I have both, searching for the right video to do what I want left me more confused.  I am however very familiar with and comfortable with After Effects, Lightroom and to some degree Registax.  Any suggestions or criticisms welcome. I achieved my first polar alignment and first galaxy image so im content with that small victory.

Thank you

ML

[MarsG76]

Yeah, focus is definitely out...

Interesting attempt with using registax for a DSO... Cool...

I never got into DSS, I found it slow... I recommend Nebulosity 3 from stark labs... There's version 4, but I still use ver 3 and am happy with it...

http://www.stark-labs.com/nebulosity.html

I convert my cr2 raw files to tiff in PS then stack them in Nebulosity... Never had a problem with it not wanting to stack any frames... It'll stack them even if you select the wrong stars.

[visualuniverse]

While it was a valiant first attempt, I think reshooting and improving focus will help with the stacking. Is the 200mm lens an F/4 lens? If so, shoot at f/5 to gain some depth of field, thus giving tighter stars. Never used RegiStax for DSO stacking. I use Maxim DL and sometimes CCDstack.

[Atreta]

 So DSS refuses to stack my raw frames, at first didn't detect any stars, made adjustments and it detected over 100k, made more adjustments and it detected 10,000.  No matter how many it refuses me.  Even converted them to Tiff and made adjustments then brought them in, still will only stack one frame of 120.

yes, that is mostly due to the stars being out of focus.

it is very hard to nail focus in the beginning but you'll get the hang of it. one thing you could do is zoom in liveview in your camera(if it has it) and try to focus with it.

keep at it, wanna see more pics from you soon.

[wxsatuser]

There have been lots of comments recently about DSS.

Every time I have seen the complaint about DSS the problem lies with the poor subs being put into the software.

Crud in crud out or in a lot of cases nothing out.

It's quite easy to nail the focus with a lens if you have Liveview.

Find a bright star and use 10x Liveview.

Oneside of focus will have a redish halo the otherside will be blue.

Inbetween you will find a white/yellow tight disc, just focus to get the tightist white disc with no hint of red or blue.

The movements between red and blue can be quite small so get used to a deft touch on the focus ring.

Once you practice this a few times it soon becomes easy