Hot take: I spent 3 years using the wrong stacking mode on my deep sky images

I been stacking my nebula photos with 'average' mode since I started astrophotography back in 2020. Last week I watched a tutorial where the guy said 'median' stacking removes satellite trails and hot pixels way better. I tried it on a 2 hour shot of Orion and the background noise was so much cleaner. Has anyone else blown hours of integration time because of a wrong setting?

3 comments

3 Comments

drew_park4d ago

Ngl that's rough buddy, but honestly kind of impressive you stuck with average mode for 3 years without noticing your subs looking like a trail of garbage.

richard_dixon4d ago

Oh man, I actually just read an article about this exact thing. Turns out a lot of people stick with default settings way longer than they realize, especially in games that don't give you clear feedback on difficulty. Three years is a long time though. I can see how you'd get used to the lower quality subs and just assume that's how the game looks. It's kind of like when you buy a cheap TV and think the picture is fine until you see a decent one side by side. Makes you wonder how many other people are out there grinding away on average mode without knowing it.

patricialee4d agoTop Commenter

Respectfully, I think you're overthinking this - some folks just enjoy the grind regardless.