CLIPY STACKING BINS DOWNLOAD

I want to shoot as long exposures as possible without saturating stars as there is a significant overhead in download times, storage and processing with many shorter exposures. 900s, 1200s, 1800s albeit not imaging with a C14, but I'm seeing fully saturated stars with the C14 at even 300s binned 2x2 and for RGB images saturation of brighter stars occurs after even 120s.

I see many exposure durations far in excess of that being used by some folks, e.g. So, if I typically would use 10 min (600sec) exposures imaging unbinned, would that be equvalent to say 5 mins exposures when binning 2x2. The question I now have is by how much should I vary my exposure times? Simple maths suggests that since I'm using 4 physical camera pixels in the 1 large (binned 2x2) pixel, that I'm capturing at x4, but I read that practical experience puts the ratio as more like x1.6 to x2. The unbinned (or binned 1x1) resolution for this equipment combimation is 0.43'/px, which even in good seeing is borderline over sampled and in more typical UK seeing is definitely oversampled, so I typically capture all data at 2x2 binning, which gets me in the green sampling range of 0.85'/px.

CLIPY STACKING BINS PLUS

I've used the 'Resources' page to check CCD suitability for my C14 plus x0.67 Optec lens, when used with my QSI583 camera. I know that there's been a lot of discussion around binning on this forum, as I've read quite a bit of it this afternoon and previously, but the more I read the more confused I become.

Clipy stacking bins