Orion 52084 instruction manual Combining Deep Sky Images

Figure 17a. Before your images are combined, an individual deep space image will have more noise and less detail.

Figure 17b. Combining multiple deep space images greatly increases the detail in the resulting combined image

Combining Deep Sky Images

Each individual deep sky image is faint and has a noticeable amount of noise. Combining the individual deep sky images eliminates the noise and enhances the detail in the deep sky object by improving the signal to noise ratio. The more images you combine, the better the resulting image will look. (Figure 17a and Figure 17b).

Now that you have multiple images of the deep sky object, you will combine the images to form one high-quality resultant image. To do this:

1.Select Open from the File menu. Find the folder you indicated with Folder, open it, and select all images for stacking using the mouse left-click and the Shift key. All of the individual images selected will open in Maxim DL Essentials.

Note: If you are combining more than 5 images, please refer to “Image Pro­ cessing – Batch Processing” as this method allows you to combine an unlimit- ed number of images without consuming more memory from your computer.

2.Select Combine in the Process menu.

3.In the Select Images window, click Add All. Then click OK.

4.The Combine Images window will appear (Figure 18). For Align Mode, choose Manual 1 star – shift only. (If you have field rotation due to a poor polar alignment or if you are using a motorized altitude-azimuth mount, then you can use the Manual 2 stars align mode.) In the Output box, select Average. Make sure the Use Centroid and Auto Next boxes are checked.

5.Find a well-shaped (circular) star in the first image displayed. Use the mouse to center the crosshairs on the selected star and left-click.

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