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Newbie Multi Night Processing.

Acquisition Stacking Processing Deep Sky
5 replies•162 views
Johnathan Allison avatar
Johnathan Allison avatar
Hello All.

I was wondering what the best practice is for multi night processing. Do you stack the photos from each night then stack those? or just gather all the subs from every night and stack them together?
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Arun H avatar
Arun H avatar
The latter. Software such as NINA or Voyager has tools that will allow you to make sure that the images from multiple nights are aligned during acquisition.
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Tony Gondola avatar
Tony Gondola avatar
I, usually just add all the light frames together. As long as rotation isn't touched and gain and exposure is the same, this works fine.
andrea tasselli avatar
andrea tasselli avatar
The former.
Kyle Cerniglia avatar
Kyle Cerniglia avatar
Given that my projects can stretch across different sets of flat calibration frames, I will stack every night's worth of data separately, then stack those stacks at then end.
Note that this only works well if each stack is a similar amount of time as the others.
Miguel T. avatar
Miguel T. avatar
You first calibrate images of each night with their matching flat, then once everything is calibrated you stack all at once.

Under the hood stacking is a form of mathematical statistics, and in statistics you want large samples. So no, turning 3 nights into 3 master stack then stacking only 3 images is not a great idea.
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