Tracking to Improve Image quality (Patreon)

In my original eBook, I had two pages devoted to tracking. In my updated book I've added three totally new pages.

One of the advances in tracking is laser alignment. Although this new method of alignment is not quite as accurate as the old fashioned optical or polar scope method of alignment, it is extremely fast for those living in the Northern Hemisphere (about 30 seconds vs. several minutes). I've seen some photographers struggle for more than half an hour to do an optical alignment.

Check out the comparison enlargements (in the attached update) for the above image of the Dark Horse Nebula and the colorful Rho Ophiuchi Region. That image was a tracked 120-second exposure, using a simple laser alignment.

TIP: (Not in my eBook) Although three minutes is the upper limit for tracked exposures with laser alignment, you can push that limit by doing several shorter tracked exposures and stacking them together!

Here's an example: Let's say you do a 180-second (3 minutes) tracked exposure, and you check it out by reviewing it on the LCD of your camera (enlarging it 10 time), only to discover that the stars are elliptical, rather than perfectly round (indicating some star movement due to laser misalignment). Your exposure was f/3.5, 180 seconds, ISO 1200.

You could now do four new exposures of f/3.5, 90-seconds, IS0 2400 (doubling the ISO to compensate for the shorter exposure time) and stack those four images together. Your stacked image would now have no star movement due to the slight laser misalignment, and the digital noise would be virtually the same as the original ISO 1200 exposure (maybe even less)!

By the way, because your four new exposures are now perfectly aligned, you don't need a special stacking program like Sequator (for Windows) or Starry Landscape Stacker (for Mac)—you can just stack the four images as a Smart Object in Photoshop, and get the same noise reduction results!

PDF: Be sure to download (below) and view my latest Version 2.0 eBook update about tracking to improve image quality.

NOTE: My patrons can expect to see many more posts over the next few months, as I continue to "serialize" updates to my original, version 1.1 "Milky Way NightScapes" eBook. These advance updates will become available exclusively to my patrons, page-by-page, until my new version 2.0 eBook is completed and published sometime in late 2023.

All "Milky Way NightScapes" eBook Version 2.0 updates are protected by copyright: © Royce Bair 2023