Thought those backyard galaxy shots on Instagram were fake, then my neighbor proved me wrong
My neighbor Gary in Bakersfield kept posting these wild galaxy pics to our Facebook group and I honestly figured he was downloading them off NASA or slapping a Hubble shot into Photoshop. His setup looked like junk too, just a beat up tripod and some scope he scored at a garage sale in 2019 for 40 bucks. So one night last month I walked over with a six pack and asked him to show me, fully expecting to catch him in the act. Turns out the guy stacks like 200 separate 30 second exposures in free software called Sequator and the results are legit. He pulled up his raw files right there on an old laptop and walked me through it, and I felt like a total jerk. I tried it myself with my cheap camera the next weekend and got a blurry smudge of Andromeda after two hours, which somehow made me respect his shots even more. So now I am hooked and also kind of mad it actually works. Anybody here use Sequator or is there a better free option for a total beginner?