First night out, DSS can't stack the pictures I've taken

[maru]

Hello everyone!

Yesterday I went on my first night out and took around 400 lights plus the calibration frames. My equipment is pretty cheap as I'm just starting out. I used a Sony a6000 with a 35mm f1.8. I took 4s exposures at ISO3200,  aiming at Deneb, as it was the only interesting area that wasn't covered by clouds.

After getting home and starting DeepSkyStacker, I added all the frames and tried aligning.

 

The problem is that for each image it finds 0 stars, so it stacks nothing.

 

I guess that the problem relies with the light frames, but I'm not sure what I did wrong. Are there not enough bright stars to align? Is the picture too noisy? Are the stars just out of focus?
I've attached one of the lights as reference. Thanks in advance.

DSC00210.ARW

Edited November 9, 2023 by maru

[michael8554]

Hi Maru.

"The problem is that for each image it finds 0 stars, "

But in your first image, DSS detected 306 stars with the slider at 35%  ?

I loaded your ARW into DSS, and it detected 148 stars at 30%, I'd use that setting..

However, even at only 4 seconds exposure, the stars in the ARW are not round.

So maybe the rest of the  400 Lights are worse ?

Michael

[maru]

1 hour ago, michael8554 said:

Hi Maru.

"The problem is that for each image it finds 0 stars, "

But in your first image, DSS detected 306 stars with the slider at 35%  ?

I loaded your ARW into DSS, and it detected 148 stars at 30%, I'd use that setting..

However, even at only 4 seconds exposure, the stars in the ARW are not round.

So maybe the rest of the  400 Lights are worse ?

Michael

Hi Michael, thanks for your reply.

The problem is that even if it initially detects the stars, when I start aligning it fails and doesn't even create a .tiff file.

I think the other lights are around the same quality, I'll attach some random ones to give an idea.

 

DSC00272.ARW DSC00337.ARW DSC00437.ARW DSC00549.ARW

[happy-kat]

If you just register first, don't stack, then you'll get to see what DSS makes of each of your light frames

Attaching jpg is more instantly helpful when seeking feedback

[happy-kat]

When you have registered them look at the score and #stars columns this will give an idea to what DSS found, pick a low star image are the stars trailing?

[maru]

1 hour ago, happy-kat said:

When you have registered them look at the score and #stars columns this will give an idea to what DSS found, pick a low star image are the stars trailing?

When I register them this is what I see

It picks nothing up. The only way to get some stars is to pick them manually, otherwise I just get NC in everything.

For the trailing, I sampled random images and found none.

I'm not sure if I'm doing something extremely wrong or the images I took are just bad (First time trying astrophotography so I wouldn't be surprised).

[ONIKKINEN]

Try lowering the star detection threshold and see what happens?

[maru]

I uninstalled DSS and downloaded the new version that came out 5 hours ago, now it's working!

I've been blessed by the devs, or more realistically I touched some option I shouldn't have in the previous version.

Anyway, thanks everyone for your help! Can't wait to see the final image!

[happy-kat]

That's great on wards to the next step. You can choose the best frame in the registered list and mark as your reference frame, the stack will then be based on that frame when you stack.