Stacking Astro Photos for Noise Free Images

This is the easiest way to get super clean astro images that are worthy of printing!

It involves taking a series of identical photos which are averaged out - leaving the noise behind and bringing out a level of clarity that would be impossible in a single shot without using a star-tracker.

This tutorial is by Peter Zelinka. He’s one of the best astro photographers around and I learn something new from every single one of his videos, even when they cover techniques that I thought I’d mastered….

There are a couple of small differences between the way he and I shoot. I prefer to use 30 images for Stacking, I find that 20 still leaves a little too much noise, especially with the black-sand foregrounds that we often have in New Zealand.

I also like to include dark frames. To do this leave your camera settings the same after your sequence of 30 photos. Put your lens cap on, and take at least another 10. When you edit your photos in Lightroom or Camera RAW (before you add them to Sequator), make sure you copy the settings you changed to the dark frames also. Put those images into the “Noise Images” section of Sequator. They’ll dramatically reduce hot pixels and any artefacts you have from the sensor heating up (usually a red glow at the edge of the photo).