Reply To: To stack or not to stack, which is best?

Hi John,
In theory stacking the frames or combining the photometric measurements should give similar results as you have found.
With short exposures of 10 seconds, you need to be careful of atmospheric seeing. You might see changes due to atmospheric turbulence from frame to frame.
One option would be to slightly defocus the camera. This will spread the light over more pixels and lower the peak, so you should be able to expose for longer. Obviously you need to avoid blending the light from nearby stars, so you only want a slight defocus.
Andy