Question about binning

[teoria_del_big_bang]

Hi,

Last night I imaged the pinwheel galaxy. 

I intended to take:-

L 120 sec  and RGB 300 sec all binned 1x1 using my Esprit 100ED and ZWO 1600 camera..

However, due to copying an old sequence I ended up with binning RGB at 2x2 but the L at 1x1.

Now this may be a very novice question but I have never known when to use binning so I am still confused as what to do with it:

• Is this data for RGB any use, or would 1x1 have been a better option?
• If I really need the data at 1x1 then I guess I just write last night off but if it is still okay to use and I take more data this evening on same target should I stick to using 2x2 or use 1x1 for tonight ?

Steve

[vlaiv]

While I'm against of such binning of CMOS data - in drivers, data is perfectly fine as long as you have stacking application that can handle it.

You'll need calibration data also binned and you can continue shooting binned if you want to add more data.

There will be little to no difference on final image quality if you bin your color data as human eye is more sensitive to detail in luminance than in change in color - this means that if luminance is shot at x1 bin - it will be sharp (provided everything else leads to sharp data - like seeing, tracking, guiding, sampling rate, etc ...).

[teoria_del_big_bang]

Thanks @vlaiv I will be using PI so should be no problem stacking and have also binned th ecalibration data.

Steve