Comet NEOWISE from the Alvord Desert

What technical feedback would you like if any?

All opinions and advice welcome, especially on wide angle astro processing. I’m currently interested in StarryLandscapeStacker, which looks very sophisticated.

What artistic feedback would you like if any?

Whatever strikes anyone’s fancy. This isn’t exactly an image with a lot of artistic leeway.

Pertinent technical details or techniques:

We had a decent view from our deck and good skies for a couple of nights but decided to see what we could do from the Alvord Desert in SE Oregon. There was more smoke and dust in the air than we wanted, but it was very dark at the new moon.

Canon 1DX Mk2, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L macro IS, at f/2.8, ISO 6400, 8 sec., daylight WB. (That is a very good lens for stars but not a very useful focal length.) Shot in landscape orientation and then the camera was tilted up a little (on a gimbal head) to capture a second frame with more of the tail. Wish I had gone further – didn’t know I would be able to bring out this much of the ion tail.

Tonal adjustments in Lightroom; even with the lens profile adjustment, I had to go to Photoshop and do the pano by hand. Cropped a little from both sides; only about the top 1/3 is from the second frame. Color Balance to tone down a brown tint and Topaz DeNoise AI and Nik ColorEfexPro Tonal Contrast and Pro Contrast to bring out the tails. Hue and Saturation to minimize some color mottling from the tonal stretch.

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Great shot of the comet Diane . Interesting idea using the gimbal for mosaic. You did a good job on that. I would try in photoshop using the curves on the green curve and just click once on the sky. I tried 5 keypress on the down arrow see if some of the green hue comes out. I do that a lot and it seems to help. It should bring out the comet a little more. There is also a free program called deep sky stacker that works pretty well if you ever get into stacking more that one image. It aligns and stacks multiple images which helps the Single to noise ratio.

Thanks, Dean! I hadn’t noticed , but the sky does look a bit greenish. I’d hate to lose the subtle blues and golds, though. I’ll see if I can walk the tightrope.

Several years ago I had tried a version of DSS that was supposed to run on Mac but never could get it to work. At the time I had an Orion Sirius and was hoping to do some deep sky work, which led to a foray into PixInsight. But I ran into limitations with regular cameras and lenses and found I was peering down a bottomless pit of equipment and techniques, and it got sidelined. I’m looking forward to what I might do with StarryLandscapeStacker, whose next version will use Darks and Flats as well as Lights.

Diane, if you got into PixInsight you know what you are doing for sure, that is what I use with the deep sky stuff. I need to look at StarryLandscaperStacker. Like you I could never seem to get DSS going.

A simple, but very effective composition. I really like how you got both tails and the look of the tails forming a big V shape. Keeping the foreground a simple silhouette keeps the emphasis on the comet, which was a smart way to go give more prominence to the comet.

Everyone processes night sky images differently, especially when it comes to WB. This image still looks a little brown/yellow to me, my personal preference is to use a cooler WB in the sky for night images (subjective I’ll admit). Here is a rework done using TK Luminosity masks, I made selection of the darks (which excludes the comet and stars) and then cooled down the dark part of the sky. This also kept the comet with a slight yellow color. This creates a bit more cool / warm color contrast. I then inverted the selection and applied a TK Clarity adjustment to just the lights to get the stars a little crisper too.

Lovely image Diane, I enjoy the simplicity as well. A few tweaks for the processing similar to what Ed suggested would really make this shine for me. I would recommend creating a curves layer, ideally only applied to the darks using a luminosity mask or blendif. Switch the Red channel and pull it down almost a 1/4, then switch to the Green channel and pull it down until the green goes away, then switch to the Blue channel and pull it down until most of the blue goes away, but leave a little bit. The switch to RGB and pull up the light tones while leaving the darker tones nearly the same. The curve should look something like this:

This adjustment will help to remove the yellowish/brown cast that most night photos have. I also selected the lights and increased the saturation which helped bring out the color in the comet.

I would also recommend dialing back the luminosity noise reduction, if you look closely the sky is mottled and looks a bit plastic like. I would rather see a bit of grain than this. Starry Landscape Stacker is very easy to use and the results are fantastic. I also tried to use DSS back in the day and that program is incredibly painful to use!

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Ed and David, thanks so much! Those are the refinements the image needs! I didn’t think of using luminosity masks or blendif, and clearly should have. I’m about ready to dig back into PI to see if I can reduce the mottling.

I was surprised how much brown there was in the sky. Up there there is no need for an LP filter, but you need one for smoke and dust.

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