Hello! I was hoping I could get some help with my pictures. In pretty much all of them, I have this really spotty background which I assume is from light pollution. I’d rather not cut off the black and make the image 100% dark. How can I fix this?
Thank you!
This is what I mean, by the way, if you zoom in on the background.
📷 The Eastern 'Face' Nebula
andrea tasselli · Sep 11, 2025, 10:24 AM
The background is "spotty" because it is noisy and it is noisy because both the RON is high and because of the background brightness being rather high I suppose. But being a Seestar I'd be happy with this result.
duly noted, thank you! so what I’m doing is probably good?
This area has a lot of hydrogen-some of which isn’t bright enough to show up especially with the Seastar or shooting through light pollution. I think this can also be mistaken as noise or patchy spots. See if you get similar results in other areas of the sky.
To me it looks like it could be walking noise. Did you calibrate the images (dark, bias, …)?
Ethan Mahlke:
duly noted, thank you! so what I’m doing is probably good?
I think this a good outcome using a Seestar. It’s more than likely blotchy due to a combination of signal noise, added noise reduction, and probably a low integration time. Noise reduction artifacts can show up like this if they’re applied too strongly.
I don’t see any exposure information but I would guess that more time on the object would help, maybe a multi-night session is needed. Lack of integration time is usually the reason for splotchy or wormy backgrounds.
Tony Gondola · Sep 11, 2025, 04:35 PM
I don’t see any exposure information but I would guess that more time on the object would help, maybe a multi-night session is needed. Lack of integration time is usually the reason for splotchy or wormy backgrounds.
Ahh duly noted, thank you! The shoot was only around 1.5 hours, 10 second images. I’ll see if in future shoots where the object is dim I can go longer :)