How stacking, ISO, and long exposures affect Milky Way astrophotography

Asked 12/26/2018

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I’m new to astrophotography and usually shoot stars around ISO 3200, 20 seconds, f/3.5, then stack about 5 frames to reduce noise. The results are decent, but my Milky Way images still don’t show strong dust lanes or much red H-alpha detail.

I’m trying to understand how stacking compares with changing ISO or exposure time:

  • Is stacking 5 frames at ISO 3200 roughly equivalent in brightness to stacking 10 frames at ISO 1600, assuming the same aperture and shutter per frame?
  • Would the lower-ISO stack have any advantage in contrast, saturation, or dynamic range?
  • If I shot many more very low ISO frames (for example ISO 200 or ISO 100), could stacking eventually recover the same exposure, or is there a practical limit?
  • If star trailing is removed with a tracker, how does stacking several shorter exposures compare with one single much longer exposure in terms of noise, dynamic range, contrast, and sharpness?

Also, why do some Milky Way or nebula images show much stronger red H-alpha than mine?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

7y ago

2 Answers

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OK - first, the H-alpha issue:

DSLRs incorporate an Infra-red blocking filter, so that the colours come out correctly for normal shots, without being affected by infrared wavelengths. Unfortunately, the normal filters used for this in DSLRs also block about 80% or so of the deep red hydrogen alpha light.

Most of the astrophoto images you see with a lot of h-alpha red in them have been taken either with modified DSLRs (where the IR blocking filter has been replaced with one that passes h-alpha) or dedicated monochrome astro cameras used with filters (a different filter for each colour channel - either R G B (for normal colour images) or narrowband (typically h-alpha, oIII and sII) filters for emission nebulae, with an optional extra luminance image). There are also a couple of DSLR models intended for astrophotographers that have h-alpha friendly filters already installed in place of the usual ones. (Downside of these and the modified DSLRs is that it throws the colour balance off for normal photography, though you can largely compensate by using a custom colour balance - or fully compensate with the equivalent of the original filter).

So, with an unmodified DSLR that's blocking about 80% of the H-alpha, you're not going to see anywhere near as much h-alpha red as you will from a modified or mono camera.

Now onto stacking:

You seem to be misunderstanding what stacking does. It's not about increasing the effective exposure - it's all about reducing noise.

An astrophoto image consists of the wanted signal, plus unwanted noise. Since the noise is generally random + or -, if you stack (basically average) a lot of images, the random noise gets reduced (by a factor depending on the square root of the number of images combined - so 4 images will halve the noise, 16 will quarter it, 64 will reduce it to an eighth and so on.

(There are also time dependant errors - that's what "dark" and "bias" frames are used to compensate for).

Note that what you get out of the stacking process is NOT a brighter image - it's a less noisy one. What that means is that you can then stretch the (brightness range of the) image more in post processing before the remaining noise becomes a problem.

So for your first question, NO - if you're using the same exposure time for the sub images, the ISO 3200 subimages will be twice as bright as the ISO 1600 ones (as you'd expect). When you stack them, the brightness of the result will still be about the same as the sub images - so the ISO3200 one will be twice as bright as the ISO 1600 one - but the noise level will have gone down more compared to the originals in the ISO 1600 result, since you're stacking more images (9 would give you 1/3 the noise, compared to 1/2 the noise with 4).

Originally by user61668. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user61668

7y ago

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Stacking improves noise, not per-frame exposure. If aperture and shutter stay the same, lowering ISO makes each frame darker; stacking more of them can improve signal-to-noise, but it does not magically create signal that wasn’t captured strongly in each subexposure. In practice, there’s a limit: very low ISO frames may be too weak relative to camera/read noise, so many dark subs won’t match a well-exposed higher-ISO set.

A tracked single 100s exposure and five 20s exposures collect similar total light, but stacking shorter frames is often preferred because it reduces the risk of ruining the whole shot from tracking errors, wind, aircraft, or saturation. One very long frame can have more risk of clipped highlights and other issues.

Lower ISO can help preserve dynamic range if your camera was clipping at higher ISO, but it won’t by itself make Milky Way dust lanes or colors dramatically better. Those depend more on sky darkness, optics, tracking, total integration time, processing, and sensor response.

For H-alpha specifically: most standard DSLRs strongly block deep red H-alpha light with their internal IR-cut filter. Images with vivid red nebula emission are often made with modified DSLRs or dedicated astro cameras and filters, so a normal DSLR will usually show much less of that red detail.

UniqueBot

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7y ago

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