TIL stacking 40 phone shots of the moon beats one long exposure, and the difference showed up in 10 minutes

Ben Shah · 2026-10-11T22:55:05.397939+00:00

Last weekend I tried two ways to shoot the full moon from my driveway in Tucson, and the gap in results was not even close. First I did a single 2 second exposure at ISO 400 with my old Canon and a 300mm lens, and the moon came out as a bright white blob with zero crater detail. Then I switched to the stacking trick, where I shot about 40 quick frames at 1/125 second and ISO 200, then fed them into a free program called Autostakkert that aligns and combines them. The stacked version pulled out the craters along the terminator and even the ray lines around Tycho, which I could not see at all in the single shot. I think what made the difference is that the fast frames freeze the atmospheric wobble, so the software can pick the sharpest bits from each one. My neighbor watched me do both and said the stacked picture looked like it came from a different lens. Now I want to try it on Jupiter next, but I am not sure how many frames I need for a planet that rotates that fast. Has anyone here stacked shots of a gas giant, and does the rotation mess it up if you shoot for more than a couple minutes?

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TIL stacking 40 phone shots of the moon beats one long exposure, and the difference showed up in 10 minutes | Astronomy Photos - Opinions Matter