The Crescent Nebula, an imploding, exploding star collision 5000 light years away
The star spikes do anything for anyone?
They are done with a photoshop plugin.
asi533 astro camera with Williams z81 telescope
18-10 minute frames (3 hours total)
Radian quad filter
PP in Capture, Pixinsight, Affinity photo, Photoshop
I’d only have star spikes where they coincide with the “nugget” - which is what should be gleaming.Otherwise they distract a bit. Overall, I love the contrast of the two main colours. It must be exciting exploring areas like this where other photographers have perhaps never been.
I love this, Dan. The star spikes are fine for me. This almost looks like an asteroid heading here to earth. Awesome.
Dan,
Your astro photography continues to amaze!
The star “spikes” seem a little too commercial for me, but then what do I know? It does seem weird you would have a couple right ones right in front of the Nebula - again, my ignorance as the nebula comes across more like a meteor or some object hurling thru space… but of course should make perfect sense to anyone who knows the depths of space.
So glad you share these as I don’t seek them out anywhere else… 
Lon
Hi Dan,
These astrophotos are astounding and the technical know-how is beyond me, though I am fascinated to learn it but don’t have the time to really engage it. I think the spikes are a little bit too much as they are. They seem randomly chosen as not all the stars have them. I would either take them out or at least tone them down.
Thanks, everyone. I agree about the spikes in most cases…
Youssef, about $4000 buys you a setup that you can take out on a clear night and shoot deep space.
Processing is no more than high quality landscape photography.
Waiting for Golden hour in Landscape photography that may or may not come is a lot more time consuming.
Bird photography is incredibly time consuming… I setup on clear nights, run my camera thru my phone and watch a movie.
To think things such as this exist in our universe…how astounding.
There’s really not much to say about this piece, other than it being quite interesting. I could take or leave the star spikes, though the ones in front of the “nugget” seem confusing; is it the same principle as the clouds behind the moon rather than in front?
While I am not a fan of the star spikes, I am a big fan of your photos, and I really like this one. Keep them coming.
I like the two main colors. I am not normally one for star spikes, but I like them here. I think because they echo the color of the “nugget”.
I always love your space images Dan. As for the star spikes, I wouldn’t mind a few of them randomly placed throughout the image that makes sense but they are pretty distracting and take away from the main event. This is just incredible. Can I ask how long it took you to learn the basics of takin the image and then how to process the image? You make it sound so simple. there must be more to it than that. At any rate, thanks so much for sharing these types of images as I never see them from anyone else and they amaze every time.
