Sequator

  I've always been interested in astrophotography but have been hampered by where I live (light pollution) and my finances. A much better camera than my Canon SX20 IS would offer more options. But it is what it is so I'm  working with what I've got.

 The Canon isn't a bad camera. It has an F/2.8 lens which is entirely useable for the night sky. But its highest ISO is just 1600 and that's magnitudes slow for what I need. It also have no "bulb" (B) setting so I'm limited to  the longest exposure the camera is programmed to deliver (15 seconds).

 It didn't prove particularly capable during the recent total eclipse of the sun, either. And with  the next coming in April 2024,  I hope to have something better by then.

 For now, at least, I may be hampered but I'm not quite down yet. I've experimented with "stacking" software in the past which allows for better resolution of dim stars and handily filters camera "noise". In the past week I've been reading about Sequator, a free Windows  10 program for stacking photos.

 Last evening we had generally clear skies (though not as clear as I'd have hoped) and I went out with both my Canon, and later with my Pixel 4A and though I'd experiment. The Pixel includes internal stacking software and does a good job for such a small lens and a hand-held package.

 Over about a four minute period it integrates night sky photos into a single image. Click here for how it works.

  Last night as I walked across a frosty back yard, Orion was rising in the east. Here's how the Pixel saw it:

Standard Night Shot

 That's a standard night shot. Astrophotography was not selected.

Astrophotography Shot

 Astrophotography mode lightens the picture and shows more stars after a 4  minute time exposure.

 While an astro-shoot is underway, the Pixel generates an MP4 movie of how the stars have moved during the time exposure. For "stacking", every star has to be slightly adjusted so that it's positioned below the previous shot. The final picture is thereby layered and gains more and more detail with each new shot.

Movie of the previous shots

Orion Close-up

 The three center stars of Orion's Belt (top to bottom: Mintaka, Alnilam and Alnitak) and Orion's Sword are highlighted in  this image. The Orion Nebula is roughly centered in the Belt. It's hard to get any detail with a cell phone but you can see the nebula in the shot below.

 Considering this is a phone, I'm amazed it can be seen at all.

Now, compare that to my Canon camera. For this sequence I was aimed northwest. I took 20 fifteen second exposures of the same scene. I used the widest position of the lens (5mm) and the lowest F-stop  (2.8). This is a single basic frame.

 As you can see, there was plenty of haze and even a bank of clouds close to the horizon.

 To best used image stacking, "noise" images are also taken under the same conditions. In this case I merely took 20 shots with the lens cap on. "Dead" pixels and electronic noise can then be removed from the finished picture.

 Sequator is much easier to use than any other similar program I've used. It's also fast. I stacked the photos several times and changed various options but none took much more than two minutes on my PC. Here's the final image.

Click on this image for full-resolution

 Here are the settings I used for the picture above ...

 With image stacking a lesser quality camera is still able to be of some astrophotography use. It's nothing like a high-end DSLR with very high ISO capability, but it allows for much better results than the camera alone.