Stacking 3 hours of data on the Orion Nebula actually ruined my shot

Everyone keeps saying more integration time is always better, but last Tuesday I tried stacking 3 hours of 30-second subs on M42. The core got so blown out I couldn't recover any detail in the trapezium region, even with HDR composition tools in DSS. I went back and combined just 45 minutes of my best 10-second frames and it looked way cleaner. Has anyone else found a hard limit on exposure time for bright DSOs?

2 comments

2 Comments

xena11d ago

Totally shocked @grace508 didn't warn me about this sooner.

grace5081d ago

Wait wait wait, hold on. You're telling me you got a cleaner result from 45 minutes of data than from 3 full hours? That's wild. I mean I've had my own issues with overexposing bright targets but that kind of difference is just crazy. I've been stacking M42 for years and I always just assumed more sub time equals better, period. So you're saying the best approach is to just ditch those longer subs entirely for the core?