Why won't DSS stack more than one frame?

[Kev11 (Kevin)]

Thank you Wilco. SEQUATOR produced a stacked image see attached.


My humblest to everyone, particularly Alex, for not sending the screenshot of DSS message which might have made my problem plain. Apparently no one else has ever got this message from DSS. (incidentally this is with threshold 50% but any other threshold gives the same answer).


I am sorry, Martin to have put you to the trouble of writing out your whole DSS procedure, however I think it is worthy of putting in the IIS handy hints for beginners.


There is more to say about my experience with all this and what I have learnt, but best perhaps saved for another day and a fresh thread.


Avagoodweekend (we have thunderstorms and rain here)

[raymo]

That is the standard message you get when DSS cannot find enough stars to
work with, nothing unusual there; just increase the setting to 80% or more, see how many stars it finds,[will almost certainly be far too many at that setting], and reduce the setting until it finds 50-100 stars,[ usually somewhere between 50 and 75%], and all will be well.
This is absolutely normal, I have done it many times over many years.
As Ryan stated, contrast is not the problem.
raymo

[Startrek (Martin)]

Originally Posted by Kev11

Thank you Wilco. SEQUATOR produced a stacked image see attached.


My humblest to everyone, particularly Alex, for not sending the screenshot of DSS message which might have made my problem plain. Apparently no one else has ever got this message from DSS. (incidentally this is with threshold 50% but any other threshold gives the same answer).


I am sorry, Martin to have put you to the trouble of writing out your whole DSS procedure, however I think it is worthy of putting in the IIS handy hints for beginners.


There is more to say about my experience with all this and what I have learnt, but best perhaps saved for another day and a fresh thread.


Avagoodweekend (we have thunderstorms and rain here)

Kevin
I’ve had this DSS procedure for years as well as many other procedures
i’ve built up during my Astronomy and Astrophotography journey over the past 4 years and still do . Happy to share them on IIS to help others
Martin

[Wilsil (Wilco)]

As Sequator stacks the images, it has to be the settings in DSS.

After setting the slider to 50%, how many stars did DSS says it was seeing?

[xelasnave]

Originally Posted by Kev11

Thank you Wilco. SEQUATOR produced a stacked image see attached.


My humblest to everyone, particularly Alex, for not sending the screenshot of DSS message which might have made my problem plain. Apparently no one else has ever got this message from DSS. (incidentally this is with threshold 50% but any other threshold gives the same answer).


I am sorry, Martin to have put you to the trouble of writing out your whole DSS procedure, however I think it is worthy of putting in the IIS handy hints for beginners.


There is more to say about my experience with all this and what I have learnt, but best perhaps saved for another day and a fresh thread.


Avagoodweekend (we have thunderstorms and rain here)

There as no need to post a photo of the message as I am totally aware of the message and I have seen it in the past...(many people have..that is when they find out about setting the threshold setting) .... and at that time I made a post here where I asked how to fix it.... and Raymo gave me an answer like his last post to you ... reading his post brought it all back to me and made me remember why I have it set at 70%.

If SEQUATOR stacks, as you tell us it has, then clearly your setting in DSS as to its threshold is too low...by the way what is your current setting for threshold in DSS?.....perhaps you could post a photo of that as it could answer the question you seem to be missing an answer to...however thinking more about the situation I thought that Ryan really gave the best advice in that you throw out the subs you are trying to stack because really they are extremely poorly focused ...you cant expect to do much with such out of focus stars even when stacked..the main object will be very blurred after a stack and probably be beyond processing...that is the point ...it seems that you are not using a focuser mask ...do you use a mask to focus?...without one achieving focus can take forever..as you need to take a photo then blow it up and check it and repeat until your stars are in focus..it would take me 15 minutes and longer when I had a dslr without enlargement in the viewer screen.....however hopefully you have learnt that paying attention to your threshold setting in DSS is important and that poor attention to this aspect will have DSS unable to register the stars necessary for it to stack...and that contrast is entirely irrelevant..
Good luck and I for one look forward to you posting your next completed image.
Alex

[Sunfish (Ray)]

There are some pretty weird looking stripy stars and artefacts in that sequator stack . Some of your subs must be bad . The only time I have had that message is when my subs have been bad , too dark or too noisy in Ha .