Lee "Pulitzer" Pullen
Testing integration times
Testing how increasing integration time improves signal to noise radio.
In astrophotography, for high quality images you don't just take a single image, but rather take a lot and stack them together. This brings out more detail, and reduces digital noise (which looks like a kind of speckling effect).
The images that make up this test were originally lots of 2-minute exposures. Most of the nebula's details are visible by hour 10. More data helps to smooth the noise out, but it's diminishing returns (at least under my light-polluted skies!
Testing integration times
Testing how increasing integration time improves signal to noise radio.
In astrophotography, for high quality images you don't just take a single image, but rather take a lot and stack them together. This brings out more detail, and reduces digital noise (which looks like a kind of speckling effect).
The images that make up this test were originally lots of 2-minute exposures. Most of the nebula's details are visible by hour 10. More data helps to smooth the noise out, but it's diminishing returns (at least under my light-polluted skies!