Capturing comets and galaxies together: stacking workflow techniques

Aries Productions Astro Pixel Processor (APP) Pleiades Astrophoto PixInsight Processing Registration Stacking Request for feedback Astronomy tools Comet Galaxy How-to
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Hi everyone,

I’ve been looking at some amazing images where a comet is captured together with galaxies in the same frame, and I’m really curious how you manage to get such clean results.

From what I understand, there are a few challenges:

  • the comet is moving relative to the stars/galaxies

  • stacking on the stars makes the comet blurry

  • stacking on the comet makes the galaxies trail

So I’m wondering — what workflow do you usually use for this?

Do you combine comet-aligned and star-aligned stacks, or is there another approach that works better?

If anyone has experience or tips (especially with APP or PixInsight), I’d really appreciate it!

Clear skies!

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Médéric Hébert avatar
Médéric Hébert avatar

Never done it myself, but from what I’ve heard from other that have done it. You capture them seperatly then recombine them like you would when adding RGB stars to NB image

Tony Gondola avatar
Tony Gondola avatar

It would be pretty easy if you did a session for the comet and then a session for the field once the comet has moved on. Then you could just screen in a starless image of the comet onto the background field.

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Tony Gondola · Mar 19, 2026, 03:07 AM

It would be pretty easy if you did a session for the comet and then a session for the field once the comet has moved on. Then you could just screen in a starless image of the comet onto the background field.

Yeah, that’s a good idea.

I will definitely try it.

Thank you. Clear SKies

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