When shooting for star colors, need an advice

[AstroScience]

Hi everyone,
I am lookibg for advice on how to choose total exposure time when shooting for star colors only. Let's say you got 10 hours for some object, now you want to recover colors for saturated stars. Lets say I found that 3 minutes exposure don't saturate the stars,  is there any principle, rule that you would select the total exposure to get the desired snr?

Thank you.

[jkmorse]

Sergio,

Since you are looking at star colors only and seem to already have your detail, then maximizing chrominance should be more important than SNR.  In that regard, the developers of PI have offered their thoughts on the benefits of only shooting 1x1 RGBs to maximize chrominance over LRGB data.  Here are two threads worth reading on the subject:

http://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?topic=6042.msg41037#msg41037

The second thread referenced in the first post is particularly important as it really lays out Juan's explanation.  For convenience here it is again: http://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?topic=1636.msg9297#msg9297

Not exactly in answer to your question , but something to think about if star color is your goal.  I have had huge success with this method and now only shoot 1x1 RGB data, primarily because the stars look just amazing.

Best,

Jim

[AstroScience]

Hi Jim,
I will give it a read, but my bad, I didn't mentioned that I'm using DSLR which is already 1:1.

When stars are overexposed, they loose their color. When I shoot shorter subs to get the non-saturated stars, they will be later replaced by HDR Composition tool.
I don't really sure how long to get the total exposure time when I shoot shorter subs.

[jkmorse]

Point taken, these threads really go to CCD imaging with filters.  Sorry about that.

Best,

Jim