The night I spent 4 hours stacking lunar shots and forgot the flats

I was out in my backyard in Tucson last Saturday trying to get a clean shot of the moon through my 8 inch SCT. After capturing over 300 frames and spending 3 hours in Autostakkert, I realized I never took any flat frames to fix the vignetting from my focal reducer. Ended up having to redo the whole session the next night, which took another 2 hours just for the flats alone. Has anyone else wasted a full evening forgetting one simple calibration step?

2 comments

2 Comments

elizabethhayes22h ago

Oh man, I feel this in my bones. I once spent a whole night shooting Saturn only to realize my flats were just blurry pictures of my thumb over the lens. At least you got a nice telescope tan out of the deal?

caleb_ross121d ago

Whole reason I don't bother with flats for lunar shots is the moon fills the frame different each time anyway. Vignetting from a focal reducer is always there but stacking 300 frames usually averages it out enough you can fix it in Photoshop with a gradient filter or even just the levels tool. Spent a whole weekend once trying to get perfect flats for planetary imaging and realized I was overthinking it. The average amateur looking at your moon shot isn't going to notice a slightly darker corner. Just crank the contrast up and call it a night.