I keep seeing people call any bright spot in a photo a "planet" when it's clearly a star

I was looking through the astrophotography subreddit last night and saw three posts in a row where people labeled bright dots as planets like Jupiter or Venus. But the star patterns in the background and the way the light spreads out tells me they're just stars. I've been taking night sky photos for about 4 years now with my basic DSLR and a tripod, and I learned the hard way. One time I posted a shot of what I thought was Saturn, and someone kindly pointed out it was actually the star Altair. It matters because new people get excited and then feel foolish when they find out the truth. Does anyone have a good trick for telling a planet from a star in a photo before you post it?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_phoenix1mo agoMost Upvoted

Wait, how do you check for stars in the background first?

jesse9881mo ago

I read somewhere that you can actually stack a couple of dark frames in Photoshop before you start processing. Basically you take a few shots of the night sky with the lens cap on, then average them together in layers. That gives you a hot pixel map to subtract out later. Someone on Cloudy Nights was saying it helps a ton with DSLR shots that have those random bright spots. Might be worth trying if you're seeing a lot of noise in your backgrounds.