How should I stack subs with different exposure lengths?

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Spooky avatar
Hello!
Last night I accidentally set the exposure time on my camera to 60 instead of 90 seconds. I now have a few hours worth of 60 and 90s subs. I could only find tutorials for Pixinsight, PS and APP; however, I use Siril. What should I do now?

CS,
Spooky
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David Nozadze avatar
Did you try stacking them as they are? You should still get a workable stack, even if your dark frame exposures differ from the lights. The result will not be ideal, but you can fix the noise and background defects in post process. 

Other option is to use Astro Pixel Processor. That software handles your kind of situation beautifully. It will match darks and lights with exposure time, calibrate them and stack them nicely.
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Drew Evans avatar
Precisely what David said above.  APP handles it all for you!
andrea tasselli avatar
With Siril you can handle this situation in at least a couple of ways: one is to pre-process (calibrate) the two sets on their own with 60s and 90s darks, bias and flat.  Come up with the two stacked images and then add them together. The other is to use the same processing stream for both set using the "-opt" option in the preprocessing command (and using the 90s dark) and then create the final stack with different weight according to the SNR level of each frame.
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Guillermo de Miranda avatar
You could try DSS. It has multiple tabs or 'groups' that you can use to stack images of different exposure length.
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Spooky avatar
Thanks for your replies.
andrea tasselli:
pre-process (calibrate) the two sets on their own with 60s and 90s darks, bias and flat.  Come up with the two stacked images and then add them together.

I think I will do it as you suggested. It seems like it is the easiest way.
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Paul Muller avatar
I have a similar question, but from a different perspective, namely is there any benefit to stacking images of varying exposure durations? I understand that it can effectively increase the dynamic range when you're imaging a target that might for example have a saturated core but finer nebulosity at the other edge (M42 and NGC 2070 being two common examples).

I'm also using APP and as a matter of course try to keep saturated pixels to a minimum by keeping exposures short, but there are times when I prefer to go longer to reduce the number of subs and of course swamp noise.
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andrea tasselli avatar
The maximum length of a light frame is usually dictated by four factors: 

1. Read noise
2. Thermal noise
3. Background brightness
4. Sky noise

The longest shot you can take without loss of information and at the same time maximise the SNR is given by how you local circumstances are affecting those four parameters.
Nicla.Camerin_Maurizio.Camerin avatar
In DSS you can stack each frame 'time' group in different tab.  The Main DSS tab for example the 60'  frames with its Darks, Flats and Bias, and the Group 1 tab the 90' frames with its Dark, Flats and Bias.  Then DSS will calibrate the frames of each time and after stack them together and produce the Autosave stacked image.

If the ISO is the same for both frames groups, then you do not need put other Bias in the Group 1, only in the Main tab because DSS will use the Master Bias generate of the Main tab for do the calibration in the Group 1 too.  Same for the Flat.

The same procedure is used for stack different nights imaging in DSS.

In this case, as the difference in time is not much, you can try to see the result stacking all together, but you need once you put all the light frames in the tab, choose for example all the 60' frames, right click and in properties change the time from 60' to 90'.

In Siril as was suggested, you can calibrated each frame time group separate  getting the db_pp_light frames.  Once you have the files calibrated of both groups time frames, you can put all them together and proceed with the registration phase r_pp_light and after the stack phase.
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Paul Muller avatar
thanks - APP does the same, I guess the question is - does it benefit the final integrated image to have a range of exposure times? (without going to an external app like Photoshop for manual HDR)
andrea tasselli avatar
It depends. If the image benefits from high dynamic range then yes, I suppose. Otherwise no.
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