The StellarMate X Manual
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galaxies and nebulae should pop up only after a few images are combined. As you
continue to live-stack, the graininess of the image would be substantially reduced resulting
in a crisp and smooth image.
The livestacked images are only as good as the data. Therefore, for Live-stacking to
operate successfully, the following conditions must be met:
1.
The image must be well-focused.
2.
The image must contain sufficient stars for the algorithm to work. The livestacking
algorithm inspects stars in each captured frame and performs the necessary star-
alignment to compensate for any offsets or rotations among the captured images.
3. For exposures above 30 seconds, you must have guiding activated. Star trails
tend to form with most consumer-grade mounts after usually 30 seconds. The
maximum unguided exposures should be less than 30 seconds, or as appropriate
given the tracking performance of the mount. Good Polar alignment significantly
helps the livestacking performance.
Livestacking can be toggled directly or during the execution of a sequence job in the
Capture module. When no sequence queue is running, the livestacker would trigger a
capture loop using the primary camera in the Quick Controls Settings. For example, if the
exposure duration was set to 5 seconds, then a 5-second capture loop is automatically
started by the livestacker. The capture loop would run indefinitely until stopped by the user.
Alternatively, if a sequence queue is already running, then toggling the liverstacker would
make it wait for the next frame to arrive before processing it.
In either case, the first frame is used to extract the reference stars information, and the
actual stacking begins starting with the second frame.
To toggle live stacking options, tap the
LIVE
button in the Camera Quick Controls. Tap the
Play button to start the process. Livestacker utilizes a median stacking algorithm and
automatic background extraction followed by contrast adjustments to bring out the details.
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