My old way of stacking Jupiter photos was a total mess

For years, I'd just take a few hundred frames, throw them all into a stacking program, and hope for the best. The result was always a soft, wobbly image that looked like it was taken through a jar of water. The turning point was a clear night last October when I got a good look at the Great Red Spot, but my final picture was just a fuzzy orange blob. I started reading up on pre-processing. Now, I use a program called PIPP to center and crop every single frame before it ever touches the stacking software. It adds about 15 minutes to my workflow, but the difference is night and day. The planet's edges are sharp, and you can actually see the banding detail. Has anyone else found a specific pre-processing step that made a huge jump in quality for planetary shots?

2 comments

2 Comments

oscarmurray11d ago

Oh man, my buddy finally started using flats and it fixed his weird gradient issues overnight.

miaa4111d ago

Know that feeling all too well... spent weeks pulling my hair out over something similar. Flats were the magic fix for me too. Glad your buddy got it sorted.