Long exposure shots looked terrible until I gave up on stacking

For about 8 months I stacked every deep sky image with software like everyone recommends. Star alignment, calibration frames, the whole setup. My Eagle Nebula from last August still looked mushy. Then I tried a single 90 second exposure, just one frame, processed it alone. Way more detail and color. I know stacking works for faint stuff but for bright targets like M42 it honestly made things worse for me. Anyone else skip stacking for certain objects or am I doing something weird with my darks?

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wren30710d ago

Calling one bad stack a reason to quit seems drastic, but you do you.