The free software for Windows (now abandonware, I’m afraid) Registax, and Lynkeos for Mac OS X and SIRIL (multiplatform) offer this type of sharpening, among others.
Comparison between a stack of 15 images Vs a single exposure.įor sharpening Moon and planetary images, a well known technique is wavelets sharpening. Technically speaking, stacking will not sharpen your image.īy being more detailed and having a better signal to noise ratio, though, it may look more crisp, but the real magic of image stacking will shine through with the editing. Does Stacking Sharpen A Picture Of The Moon? If you want to know more about the image stacking technique and what software is available, have a look at this article we published just a few months ago. The better quality and details the smaller stack shows is readily visible. Comparison between stacking all 85 RAW images in my sequence with stacking only the best 15%. This means that it is always best to stack fewer images of better quality than stack a lot of images with mediocre image quality. So, yes: you should always shoot for image stacking and then decide what to do with the data you have collected.īefore going on though, let me remind you of an old, universal saying that is very pertinent to image stacking: garbage in, garbage out.
How much the Moon fills the frame at different focal lengths with a full-frame camera. The aligned images are then combined into a single photo, for example, by averaging for each pixel their pixel-values across the sequence.īut for DSO, the image alignment is done using stars, while for the Sun, the Moon and the planets, the image alignment is done using either global features or aligning points (either user-defined or generated automatically).īecause of these crucial differences, only a few astrophotography software (Pixinsight, for example) can stack deep sky and lunar/planetary images: most of the time, you have to use different software for the different types of targets.īut don’t worry: image stacking is a highly automated process that will take you only a few clicks to get it done.Īnd shooting for image stacking, at least for the Moon and the planets, does not require extra gear: you can shoot the moon from a fixed tripod with a 600 mm lens and still be able to stack from a few tens of images to a hundred or so before the Moon will start moving out the frame.The selected number of images (say the best 20%) are aligned to the image of reference (usually the one with the best quality).The images in the sequence are scored by quality (relatively to the best one in the sequence).Regardless of your target, image stacking consists of three main steps:
#STACKING SOFTWARE ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY MOVIE#
The sequence can be a series of long exposures or a short movie clip (preferably with a high frame rate): the first case is the standard for deep sky astrophotography, while movies are served to solar, lunar, and planetary astrophotography.īut the differences between Moon Stacking and image stacking for Deep Sky Objects, DSO, run deeper than just how the image sequence is captured, and lie in how the images and video frames are aligned and combined. Image stacking, whether for the Moon, a planet, a distant deep-sky object, or our majestic Milky Way, always begins in the field by taking a photographic sequence of your target. 7) Conclusion What is Moon Stacking And Should I Do It?
0 kommentar(er)
