Drizzle with binning

[Geoff]

The advantage of binning is a better SNR, but it’s possible that the binned image could be undersampled. However, this can be remedied by drizzling.
So is there a downside to binning (to improve SNR) followed by drizzling ( to restore resolution)?

[RickS]

Hi Geoff,

Try taking some unbinned data, use IntegerResample to software bin x2 and then Drizzle back up and see what you think!

Drizzle doesn't perfectly recover resolution and reduces SNR (TANSTAAFL principle.)  It just doesn't seem obvious because the noise is smeared about (converted to correlated noise.)

Hardware binning is only worth doing if a) you are unable to do sky limited subs (possibly true for narrowband) and b) you have a camera that gives a significant reduction in read noise when binned (most Kodak/Truesense sensors don't.)

If it were me I would just capture unbinned and do some gentle noise reduction.  I would expect that to work at least as well...

Cheers,
Rick.

[Geoff]

Thanks Rick
No free lunch, just a different arrangement on the plate.