Found a way to stack star photos that actually cuts out light pollution

I live near a small town in Ohio, so there's always some glow on the horizon. Tried stacking 50 shots in DeepSkyStacker last week and got a mess of orange haze. Then I read about using a median combine instead of average in the stacking settings. It killed most of the light pollution in one go. Has anyone else tried this trick or found something better for suburban skies?

2 comments

2 Comments

wendysmith8d agoMost Upvoted

Had a buddy try this exact same trick on his rig set up in his backyard near Columbus. He said it cleaned up the sky so much he thought the software was broken at first. Seriously, he texted me a before and after and I couldn't believe it was the same data.

ivancoleman7d ago

Reminds me of a buddy of mine who lives out in the sticks near a state park. He spent like a month trying to dial in his mount, thought he had it perfect, then a guy from the local astronomy club told him to check his polar alignment. Turns out he was off by like half a degree. Once he fixed it, he said his subs went from looking like "noisy junk" to "what the heck, is this real?" He ended up having to recalibrate all his processing workflows because the data was so clean it didn't need half the steps he used before. Funny how one little thing can change everything.