Quote:
Originally Posted by rat156
Binning skyglow results in brighter skyglow.
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Not if you subtract the skyglow first (leaving the real sky), then bin the result.
Then you're left with only the useful data binned.
I use this technique to gain more light quickly to avoid longer exposures as my tracking and alignment is usually shoddy. No such thing as a free lunch; you lose resolution, but that resolution is mostly wasted in my case anyway (bad seeing + afocal projection with cheap eyepieces).
If you're after a better signal-to-noise ratio and want to use binning, you can scale the binned result back to the original brightness levels (it's the same operation as taking the average of the binned pixels), provided the levels weren't capped.