Stacked 30 photos of Orion and got a weird blue haze around the nebula

I tried stacking 30 short exposures of Orion's nebula with no calibration frames just to see what happened, and ended up with this blue glow bleeding into the dark space around it. Some people say that's a sign of poor flats, others insist it's from light pollution or a dirty sensor. Has anyone else run into this and figured out what actually causes it?

3 comments

3 Comments

stellac9719d ago

Yeah it's almost like how phone cameras do that thing where the sky turns weird purple at night. The software is trying to fix something it doesn't understand and ends up making a mess instead. Were you shooting from somewhere with a lot of streetlights nearby?

dylan_rodriguez19d ago

Wait, are you telling me the streetlights actually made that much of a difference? I always figured those weird purple skies were just bad luck with cheap phone sensors. @michael_jones was spot on about white balance being the real trickster here. I definitely had streetlights nearby when I shot that, but never thought they could mess with the whole sky like that. Might actually try turning off the auto white balance next time I'm out at night.

michael_jones19d ago

The streetlights trick the white balance just like fluorescent lights in an office mess with your photos.