Deep Sky Stacker problem - comet head nor stars recognized

[bluedemon25]

Hi. I saw other uses write in this subform for advice on DSS problems and am hoping I can get advice on how I may salvage my images and do stacking SOMEHOW even if having to do some alternative software. I have used DSS and prefer it if at all possible. I am not sure what's wrong, if it's my stars are "too fat" to recognize, but I may not get another chance to shoot this for a variety of reasons (not just what's  in the sky but personal) so I'd desperately like to fin d away to use what I got in case I don't get out for another attempt.  that said if a glaring error obvious you anyone here has a correction a relatively novice person can employ, please let me know.

 

My problem is, unlike any other time (I shot photos of Comet Neowise with the same equipment and technique) I zoomed in with my 75-300 mm lens (not fancy, kit lens just as with what worked with Neowise and other astro photo projects), same intro level Canon T5 Rebel body, and when loading my images (darks, bias, lights (I suck at flats so no I don't have them), it upon registering detects only what looks like a few points of noise as stars.  I tried to add manually the stars (and similarly the comet), but it will only allow adding some of those probably dot of noise roughly nearby than anything that is the admittedly fat looking star, or the head of the comet. Is there a way to force this or get around it? I'd really love to use it's capability to stack and output a resultant file I can take into photoshop. I don't know why the stars look kind fat.  I did my normal, manual focus first on the moon (figuring that's fairly infinite distance but some tweaking need for max detail clarity), than went to a nearby star, lcd screen liveview still as my way of manually focusing to check I got as sharp a star as I can tell). This is what I always do, then i swung around (comet roughly opposite moon position in the sky) and at the 75 mm setting before zooming out did test exposures, found the comet, zoomed in a bit more , do the same, make fine adjustments of camera position on the tripod, zoom in more etc... until at nearly or actually at max zoom, (I think i did 250 rather than 300 mm) and took a bunch of photos to stack.

 

The results were the clear head and tail of the comet, but the stars were kinda fat.  I did 4 second exposures which has always been well within for me to not get football or streaking . So I'm not sure what's up and why it won't detect these stars or let me manually do it. 

 

if it is impossible is there other windows available software I can use to do this and generate a resulting image (i rather not just stack images in photoshop and play with opacity and pretend that's fine)

 

Anyway thank you for any and all advice

 

this is my fist post here.

IMG_3602.CR2

[happy-kat]

Welcome. When you then repositioned the camera to be looking at your target, you mentioned the other side of the sky from the Moon where you had focused) did you check focus again before taking all your photos? 

 

[michael8554]

"until at nearly or actually at max zoom,"

Zooming after focusing may well have altered the Focus, as you can see:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Have you tried stacking the comet in DSS instead of the stars ?

Michael

Edited October 19 by michael8554

[happy-kat]

I have in last few days stacked a comet in the latest release of DSS and found all three stacking options stacked what I expected (earlier release hadn't)