Gaps in star trails

[skymate9]

Hello.
I'm seeing gaps in my star trail sequences. How can I make the trails appear smoother?
It was mostly clear, but passing thin clouds intermittently obscured the stars, breaking the trails.
Thanks,

[aaronwmorris]

The gaps are due to the intermediate frames being excluded by the star trails algorithm. Frames can be excluded due to brightness, star count, moon altitude, etc.

In your log, you should find a line that looks like the following. It will tell you how many images were excluded and why.

2026-04-26T05:38:39.337518-05:00 allskyimx477 [INFO] Video-4-95547/MainThread starTrails.finalize() [401]: Excluded 486 images - adu: 0, sun alt: 90, moon mode: 396, moon alt: 0, stars: 
0, pixels: 0 (final 94)

My guess is the the thin clouds either increased the brightness beyond the threshold or reduced the star count. You might have to slightly increase the Star Trails Max ADU setting very slightly so that more images are included.