The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
This is a very dim nebula 7500 light years away, located near Cassiopeia. Last night I got 5 hours of acquisition on it and processed it today with a technique I have just learned for removing stars and processing them differently than the object. The amount of stretching (similar to moving the middle slider right in a Levels adjustment) needed to bring out the nebulosity in the very dim exposure will blow out and bloat stars.
Specific Feedback
All comments welcome!
Technical Details
More than the above description is probably not of general interest and pretty tedious to describe without jargon.
Another wow - very cool! The number of stars is simply astounding. Is the color there in the capture? I can see that it would be enhanced during processing, but do you need to add any?
Thanks, @Bonnie_Lampley! The color is basically accurate but I think I could have saturated reds a little bit. This is a special astro sensor designed to be sensitive to near IR, which is a common spectral band in nebulae – it is the frequency of light emitted by hydrogen atoms “excited” by the cosmic rays from nearby stars, when the electron drops back to its resting state.
There are more stars captured than are obvious here at this size – I worked hard to simplify them or they are overpowering. And this is looking away from the galactic center, where stars are a little less plentiful.
Diane, this type of photography is way out of my wheelhouse, however, I can still appreciate not only the visual results but your overall technical efforts applied here. Totally amazing work…
Thanks, @Paul_Breitkreuz and @DeanRoyer! There is not much basis in these images for scientifically accurate or “realistic”. Although tiny, the stars are much brighter than underlying nebular structures and the photons spill over into adjacent photosites. There are choices for how prominent the stars are and better and better ways to keep them from being overpowering and still attractive. It’s almost impossible to process the same integrated image (sort of equivalent to our raw files, as the basic capture) twice and get exactly the same result.
