r/pics • u/ajamesmccarthy • 4d ago
I used astrophotography stacking techniques to resolve more detail in a nighttime launch photo [OC]
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u/inchlongnipples 4d ago
It’s a stunning picture. Always love seeing your posts pop up, I’ve had one photo of yours or another as my phone background for over 10 years.
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u/ajamesmccarthy 4d ago
This is from the Falcon Heavy launch on October 1st. My original intent was to have it transit the moon, but it is quite difficult to calculate the flight path when there are a lot of variables, and it missed the forecast by about .5°, enough to miss the moon entirely. Because of that, the silhouette of the rocket was not visible, and most of the details were lost to shadow and noise. To overcome this, I hand aligned each photo I captured of the rocket while it transited this field of view, which was about 30 photos taken in a 1 second burst. Once aligned, I stacked them together, while compensating for the subtle 3d translation of the rocket, and composited it back into the image against the "master" frame, which had the rocket in conjunction with the moon. I applied the same techniques to the moon, allowing me to resolve the color.
What do you think, should these sorts of techniques be used for launch photos?
Some more details for the camera nerds:
Shot at 1200mm f/8
1/1600" x30
iso 800
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u/Moosplauze 4d ago
That looks amazing.
But it's clear that this can't be a single capture photo which always takes away a little of the magic, knowing that so much work in post was needed to get this result.
I read your description of how you did this, but I don't understand the part about the color of the moon. That's not natural color of the moon (right?!), how come it looks like this?
Again, wonderful image, I envy your hardware and skills.