Reconcile an integration with its acquisition account

Your final image and its acquisition account answer different questions. Integration combines image data. An acquisition account describes the individual exposures you chose to include. Start with the input list from the integration that produced the image you are publishing.

Captured, retained and resolved are different counts

Suppose a synthetic observing run captured 60 Ha exposures at 180 seconds. Your final integration used 52. The captured total is 10,800 seconds; the retained total is 9,360 seconds, or 2 hours 36 minutes. Select those 52 individual light frames. Do not add the final stack as a 53rd exposure.

If one retained frame lacks a date, the sheet can account for 51 frames with resolved metadata: 9,180 seconds. Its overview says that one retained frame still needs attention. This subtotal is incomplete. Correct the missing date from a trustworthy source or exclude that frame before export. A missing filter equipment ID is a separate handoff issue: it blocks CSV readiness but does not erase a valid header exposure from the overview.

Pixel rejection does not necessarily remove a frame

Siril documents both pixel rejection during averaging and whole-image selection. A satellite-trail pixel removed by rejection does not mean that its entire source frame was excluded. Do not subtract a rejection-map percentage from your exposure total. Use the actual final input-frame list. Frame weights and pixel contributions are not reconstructed here. See Siril's stacking documentation.

Crossing midnight with two exposure lengths

These example records all use one source filter label, Ha. Their recorded dates differ across midnight, and the later frames use two durations. Explicitly omitting the optional filter ID produces three rows:

date,filter,number,duration
2026-09-12,,20,180
2026-09-13,,32,180
2026-09-13,,4,300

The sum is 10,560 seconds, or 2 hours 56 minutes. The sheet does not merge the dates into one observing night and does not average 180-second and 300-second exposures. The number of calendar dates is not the number of nights, and the exposure sum is not elapsed wall-clock time.

Trace a questionable value back to its source

1. In Frames, choose Needs attention to find retained files with unresolved metadata. Select a filename to open its inspector.
2. Compare the editable values with the original mapped primary-header values. A missing source value is shown explicitly. Corrections are sheet-only overrides.
3. Use Restore header values if a correction was mistaken. This removes that frame's overrides; it does not edit the file or change whether you retained it.
4. In Filter IDs, resolve each source filter using your equipment record, or choose the explicit blank option. A similar filter name is not evidence of identity.
5. In Export, expand the source list for a row. Confirm its filenames against the integration input list, then save the CSV and audit together.

When to split the review

Keep separate targets and mosaic panels in separate reviews unless you intentionally want a combined acquisition account. The overview flags multiple nonempty OBJECT labels among resolved retained frames as a review prompt. Equal OBJECT labels do not prove equal sky coverage; missing labels cannot be interpreted. This tool does not inspect WCS footprints, evaluate duplicate files or know which crop you published.

Keep the audit private until reviewed: original scalar headers may contain object names, locations and equipment details. AstroBin's official acquisition schema defines the CSV handoff; a successful download does not validate an account import.

Open the sheet or return to all guides.