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Stacking 3 cheap filters on my telescope wrecked a whole night's exposure
I tried using a UV filter plus a moon filter plus a light pollution filter all at once thinking it'd give me a cleaner shot of Andromeda. Got back 4 hours of data and every single frame had weird internal reflections and a blue haze I couldn't fix. Anyone else learn the hard way that more glass between you and the sky is just asking for artifacts?
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spencer_park264d ago
Yeah man I did basically the exact same thing when I started out. I was convinced more filters equals less noise but really it just bounced light around inside the tube and gave me a mess to deal with in processing. What finally worked for me was pulling off everything except a single decent clip-in light pollution filter and just using that. That one filter alone gave me way better contrast on M31 with none of those ugly reflections. I also started taking flats and darks more seriously after that failure and it made a bigger difference than any stack of cheap glass ever could.
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jana_jones4d ago
Stop stacking filters like that. Each piece of glass is another chance for reflections and haze to ruin your image. I've been there too with a similar setup on M31, and it took me a whole season to figure out the problem. Stick to one filter at a time, preferably a good quality light pollution one if you really need it, and leave the UV and moon filters off unless you're shooting the moon itself. Your camera sensor already has a UV/IR cut built in, so adding another one just creates more problems than it solves.
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