Astroart Forum

I have a rather general question regarding broadband deep sky images - for aesthetic rather than scientific purposes.

I am currently clipping/saturating on "bright" stars in my images at very short exposures - 30 seconds for example. I am currently "learning" the basics with an unmodified nikon DSLR so I understand that my sensitivity is not great, but I wondered if there are any best practices for approaching the problem of over saturated "bright" stars in a broadband image or do I just accept that they will be heavily clipped and get on with it?

I'm not really sure how people are able to take 30m exposures without massive clipping. Are long exposures only practicable when taking narrow band images?

My apologies if this has been asked a million times before, or if this is the wrong forum for beginner questions.

Cheers,
Andrew.

Clipping / saturation is usually accepted without problems on bright stars. You may decrease the effect summing many 60 seconds exposures, but I suggest it only if this gives you other advantages, for example: avoid of autoguiding, dithering (since you will use different pixels) etc.