Stacking photographs

[wildman]

Hello,

Following the advice of a poster on here, I invested in the ZWO Seestar.

For starters, I have been able to take some pretty nice photos of the moon with it. I haven't got to grips with changing the settings but am I right in thinking that the next stage would be to stack the images?

Presumably this takes several photos of the same image to layer them and reduce the noise? Do I require specific software for this? If so, what?

Grateful for any advice.

Cheers.

[Albir phil]

I don't use a seestar, but the stacking software I use is Deep sky stacker, for processing I use, Photoshop, sometimes Affinity, but I find Affinity slow and at times freezes.Photoshop is I think easier to use.

[Elp]

For lunar/solar/planetary you'd use Autostakkert or registax.

[Elp]

It's usually better to record an image sequence (uncompressed RAW format) or a short video so illumination and the target is consistent between frames, though for lunar you can probably get away with individual images shot close together.

Edited July 23 by Elp

[Ardsley Astro]

Isn't the whole point of the ZWO Seestar that it does the stacking itself or am I missing something. I thought it was a do everything smart telescope?

 

Does it not auto align itself, plate solve. find the target you have asked it to find. Then take multiple subs and stack them together giving you a final image? I know you can also save the raw subs so you can stack them together yourself later if you wanted to, but initially I wouldn't have thought you would need any extra software.

 

[Elp]

It does auto stack, but not sure whether it does this for planetary imaging.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

An external stacking program (I use Astro Pixel Processor for deep sky) allows you to combine images from multiple nights (or even multiple cameras/telescopes). I am not sure Seestar can do that. Combining multiple nights worth of data gives much better results, I find. For planetary, lunar and solar imaging you need very high frame rates, and stacking programs like AutoStakkert (free), and perhaps PIPP to preprocess before stacking.

[Gfamily]

With a 200mm focal length, it's not really designed for planetary imaging.

Yes, in general terms, when used for deep sky imaging , it applies its own stacking and updates the image it sends to the App..There is a setting for it to store the individual subs internally, and you can then download the subs to your PC with a USB cable. 

Personally, I am more often using Affinity 2 to do the stacking of these images (I've used DSS in the past); I like the macros you can get for Astro Image processing in Affinity 2.

Edited July 24 by Gfamily

[Gfamily]

34 minutes ago, Ardsley Astro said:

 I know you can also save the raw subs so you can stack them together yourself later if you wanted to, but initially I wouldn't have thought you would need any extra software.

You're right that you don't need any further SW, but the advantage of downloading the Subs and stacking them yourself is that you can start any further processing with an uncompressed image rather than the JPEG that the SeeStar gives you.