A retired astrophotographer told me to bin my subs, I was skeptical

This guy at a star party in Tucson kept insisting I bin my 3nm narrowband data 2x2 to cut my exposure times. I thought it would just blur everything, figuring I'd lose all the fine detail in the Pelican Nebula. After 2 nights of fighting with 10 minute subs that looked like noise soup, I tried his way with 5 minute subs and it worked way better. The signal to noise jump was huge and honestly the detail held up fine at 80% zoom. Anyone else had success binning despite thinking it was a cheat move?

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andrew_rodriguez22d ago

The whole "binning feels like cheating" thing is just in your head, I did the same dance with my dual band data on the North America Nebula. Chased 20 minute subs forever, piles of rejected frames from satellites and clouds. Switched to 2x2 binning at 300 second subs and the result was cleaner, period. Nebula details like the dust lanes are big and soft anyway, you don't need pixel peeping level resolution for that. The only time I'd keep it unbinned is if I was shooting a tight planetary nebula or a small galaxy where the structure is actually tiny. For wide field stuff, 2x2 all the way, your imaging time gets cut way down and you can grab more nights of data.