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Three years ago in my backyard, I tried to photograph the Orion Nebula with a $300 camera. The results were so bad I almost quit the hobby.
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the_hayden2mo ago
Saw a video where someone's first astro shots looked like fuzzy blobs too.
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taraross10d ago
Whoa, I gotta respectfully disagree a little here. I mean, sure the stacking helps a ton and I totally respect @leewalker's hustle with those fifty frames, but I think sometimes people jump into stacking before they even get the basics right. Like if your first shots look like smeared blobs, maybe it's not just a stacking issue, maybe it's focus or tracking or just pointing at something too faint. I've seen people spend hours stacking garbage and still end up with garbage, you know? idk, for me the first win is just getting one single crisp shot of the moon or a bright star cluster, then you build from there. Feels like the blobby phase is almost a rite of passage though, ha.
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leewalker2mo ago
Ha, my first try looked like someone smeared Vaseline on the lens. I was ready to throw the whole camera out. @morgan_king36 is right about stacking, it's a total game changer. I must have stacked like fifty of those blurry messes before anything even slightly nebula-shaped showed up.
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morgan_king362mo ago
Oh man, I totally get that! What saved me was just stacking a ton of photos for free with DeepSkyStacker. It pulls out details you can't see in a single shot. My next try looked way better and kept me going.
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