Stars, stacking, exposure time, Lum / RGB / Narrowband

[Demon]

Hi All,

I'd appreciate knowing your experiences as while this sounds like it should be completely obvious and detailed everywhere, I'm struggling to get an decent idea.

I've been doing basic mono with just IRcut filter and just bypassed RGB and going for narrowband filters, about to try RGB and see what I've missed.

However while I can get really good stars with IRcut/no filter, I'm struggling to get nice stars with the narrowband.

I appreciate some of this is down to my field of view being pretty small (if larger then likelihood of having more and brighter stars improves situation/stacking), however while my DSO's are visible I didnt even think stars would be a problem until now.

Most of you guys/gals have beautiful apos that in theory collect less light than my newt, however I'm sure yours will be sharper and therefore the pinpoint stars may actually be brighter, plus your generally doing longer exposures.

 

So my basic question is simply when youre going from lum to RGB to narrowband filters, have you ever notice a significant change in star brightness, or as I more suspect this has likely never even been part of your equation and never had stacking issues for this reason?

 

I think this is also somewhat hidden as most of us have autostretch switched on and we're mainly looking at the DSO's as the images roll in.

I may be completely wrong but I'd appreciate getting an idea of your thoughts and experiences regarding this thanks very much.

 

[Carastro]

Stars are generally smaller in Narrowband, and the smaller the nm the smaller the stars.

 

Posting some examples might help us to help you better.  

[Demon]

Thanks Carole, Thats exactly what I'm after even though it sounds like pretty basic stuff and obvious -  much appreciated. Results are likely not going to add to conversation as they are pretty poor for a few other reasons also (slightly embarrassing) - collimation, camera cooling and trying to get to short exposures. but I still think I'm making headway with the beast and happy that filters, filter wheel and coma corrector are working now. Every turn brings a new learning curve and gradually getting everything working together.