irandar Posted December 2, 2021 Share Posted December 2, 2021 Hi folks, As I understand from reading, it is possible to do astrophotography without using tracking equipment. This would require taking a large number of photos at high ISO and sufficiently short times (500/FL in sec) so that no star trails result. Would Affinity Photo be able to successfully stack such photos? Thanks for your advice Irving Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NotMyFault Posted December 2, 2021 Share Posted December 2, 2021 Yes, within some limits. The source images need enough structure to be able to align the images. If source images become so noisy that noise and stars are indistinguishable, Affinity won’t rescue. I made multiple stacks even before Astro-stacking was introduced. Quote Mac mini M1 A2348 | Windows 10 - AMD Ryzen 9 5900x - 32 GB RAM - Nvidia GTX 1080 LG34WK950U-W, calibrated to DCI-P3 with LG Calibration Studio / Spider 5 iPad Air Gen 5 (2022) A2589 Special interest into procedural texture filter, edit alpha channel, RGB/16 and RGB/32 color formats, stacking, finding root causes for misbehaving files, finding creative solutions for unsolvable tasks, finding bugs in Apps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
irandar Posted December 2, 2021 Author Share Posted December 2, 2021 Would this mean having one or two bright stars in the field? Thanks, Irving Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NotMyFault Posted December 2, 2021 Share Posted December 2, 2021 I would recommend to just give it a try. We had a report where user tried to stack images taken in 2012 with a very noise Sony APSC and f8 mirror objective. This did not work well, based on insufficient source image quality My own experiments with 2016 EOS 80D gave quite good results. There is no hard limit. What is holding you back ? You may read this post and download the Sony / Canon RAW files, to see what I mean. Its only about stacking for noise reduction, not for alignment. It should only show examples of sufficient/ insufficient images. Jörn Reppenhagen 1 Quote Mac mini M1 A2348 | Windows 10 - AMD Ryzen 9 5900x - 32 GB RAM - Nvidia GTX 1080 LG34WK950U-W, calibrated to DCI-P3 with LG Calibration Studio / Spider 5 iPad Air Gen 5 (2022) A2589 Special interest into procedural texture filter, edit alpha channel, RGB/16 and RGB/32 color formats, stacking, finding root causes for misbehaving files, finding creative solutions for unsolvable tasks, finding bugs in Apps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jörn Reppenhagen Posted December 3, 2021 Share Posted December 3, 2021 12 hours ago, irandar said: As I understand from reading, it is possible to do astrophotography without using tracking equipment. Sure it's possible. Walking from Berlin to Moscow is also possible. If you concentrate on the moon, you won't need any tracking mount. Jupiter and Saturn may also come into reach. It is also possible to do some more basic astrophotography without - but it's like walking from Berlin to Moscow, with the results usually being "suboptimal", politely expressed. If you love this hobby, do yourself a favor and invest in a tracking mount, there's inexpensive solutions providing you far more observation and general comfort and allowing longer exposure times (but don't expect being able to do minutes of exposure). But your first step should be achieving sharp, focused pictures without excessive noise and grain - see thread linked by NotMyFault. NotMyFault 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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