Help with stacking

[Nathan UK]

No doubt this is covered somewhere so I apologise in advance,

ive just got a app on my phone where I can stack images.....

but how does stacking work???

can I stack the same image on itself multiple times for more detail?

does it have to be different images? 

I tried stacking the same image on itself multiple times n seen no difference but I'm unsure if I was doing it right.

had a good play with the visual settings and these are the results I got below.

any advice and if you could clear up the above two questions I would be really greatful, 

the top two questions make me feel silly haha but I haven't got a jar of glue....

thanks

Nathan 

[Cornelius Varley]

The concept of stacking is to improve the signal to noise ratio. Each image will have a certain amount of data (the image) and a random amount of noise. Stacking images has the effect of averaging out the random noise over the stacked images giving a better image. This doesn't work f you stack the same image 1000 times though. The single image has a fixed amount of data and noise, so no amount of stacking will give you a better image.

[Nathan UK]

3 hours ago, Cornelius Varley said:

The concept of stacking is to improve the signal to noise ratio. Each image will have a certain amount of data (the image) and a random amount of noise. Stacking images has the effect of averaging out the random noise over the stacked images giving a better image. This doesn't work f you stack the same image 1000 times though. The single image has a fixed amount of data and noise, so no amount of stacking will give you a better image.

Thanks for the explanation mate