Image Stacking alignment

[Jojo204]

Very stupid question, but I haven't stacked before and am assuming that between each light shot I take of M42, I have to manually move the camera to counteract the rotation. Is this correct? Cause Ive seen some examples where the camera is not aimed correctly between each shot and the stacking software cant process it.

[JOC]

33 minutes ago, Jojo204 said:

Very stupid question, but I haven't stacked before and am assuming that between each light shot I take of M42, I have to manually move the camera to counteract the rotation. Is this correct? Cause Ive seen some examples where the camera is not aimed correctly between each shot and the stacking software cant process it.

Well I'm just learning how to do this and what I've found tonight is that I didn't need to move the camera very often - just as long as I had the stars in the frame the stacking software seemed to cope, but I could see where the image had moved at the edges so when the software had done its stuff I just cropped the image where I could see I had lost the edges.

[bobro]

Stacking software is pretty clever - it can detect and cope with rotation (even 180 degrees) and align the images correctly. Another stacking software function is cropping - to the common intersection of the individual subs if required.

[Jojo204]

10 minutes ago, bobro said:

Stacking software is pretty clever - it can detect and cope with rotation (even 180 degrees) and align the images correctly. Another stacking software function is cropping - to the common intersection of the individual subs if required.

And does it crop it automatically? Sorry this is all new to me haha

[Jojo204]

31 minutes ago, JOC said:

Well I'm just learning how to do this and what I've found tonight is that I didn't need to move the camera very often - just as long as I had the stars in the frame the stacking software seemed to cope, but I could see where the image had moved at the edges so when the software had done its stuff I just cropped the image where I could see I had lost the edges.

Yeh I saw some tutorials where they crop the edges, thanks

[bobro]

23 hours ago, Jojo204 said:

And does it crop it automatically? Sorry this is all new to me haha

Yes it can. For example 'Intersection Mode' in Deep Sky Stacker.

[Jojo204]

21 hours ago, bobro said:

Yes it can. For example 'Intersection Mode' in Deep Sky Stacker.

Yeh I found it out. Here’s my first photo of M42!