Quality of Live Stack files

kmorgan01

I've been using the stacked images from the "Live" mode of my ASIair Plus (as opposed to the individual lights) to import into Photoshop for further processing, and having quite good results. I open the stacks in ASI Studio FITs Viewer, then save them as .JPG or .TIFF files for opening in Photoshop. My question for the group is this: would I see significantly better results if I instead used those individual lights from the ASIair and did the stacking in DSS or APP? I've been told the answer is yes, but my experimentation so far hasn't revealed much difference in the two approaches, and it's far easier to just use the ASIair stack. Any thoughts and/or observation would be appreciated, as I'm still learning!

Walf@ZWO

kmorgan01 It doesn't make much difference if the camera with low thermal noise

johnpd

I originally used the stacked image output with decent results. I had an Alt-Az mount so I was limited as to how long an exposure I could take before field rotation would be a problem.

What kind of mount are you using, Equatorial or Alt-Az? An equatorial mount would allow you to take much longer individual exposures, stack them, and get great images. In the long run, that is the best way to go. When I finally got my Equatorial mount, just for fun I took a 20 minute Live Stack exposure and that turned out very well.
ZWO's ASIStudio has a "Deep Sky Stacking" program which does a pretty good job of stacking images.

JohnD

andybutt

I think I am correct in saying that the live stack only uses one of each calibration files, therefore only one dark and one flat. It makes sense that if you use Dss or similar you can use multiple calibration frames to get a better final image.