Re: [APML] Winter Milky Way

[glenn shaw <glennshaw@alaska.net>]

Wei Hau's montage of the milky way from Mauna Kea is phenomenal!!!!! I have 
spent many a night at the Mauna Loa Observatory and have detected how 
transparent and dark the skies are, but this photo really hits you and 
confirms this great transparency.

My old mentor Bart Bok, author of Milky Way and student of Harlow Shapley, 
discoverer of "Our galaxy" would have been deeply impressed with this 
wonderful photograph.

Congratulations!!  And many thanks for posting such a gorgeous photo.

Glenn Shaw

At 04:30 PM 1/12/04, you wrote:
>ALOHA,
>
>I finish the FIRST processing of my winter Milky Way mosaic.  I'm not
>too confident of the results.  Probably the best version still need
>a few more iterations.
>
>It's in
>http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/~wang/gallery/picutres/WinterMilkWay2003.htm
>
>I had sent this picture to a Japanese magazine.  Let me
>copy the comments to the editors here:
>
>1. This is a mosaic of 10 pictures.  Nine of them form the base 3X3
>mosaic.  An extra one centered at Orion was stacked onto the base
>to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of this region.
>
>2. All 10 images were taken under excellent atmospheric transparency.
>
>3. Vignetting pattern of the optics was removed by my own written
>program.  Distortion correction and initial color match were done in
>Registar.  Sky background removal, final color match, and mosaicing
>were done in PhotoShop.  Except for tone curve changes, no further
>image processing was applied.
>
>4. Due to the light pollution, zodiacal light, and scattered car
>light, the sky background in each of the 10 frames is very different
>and nonuniform.  The vignetting correction and the removal of these
>unwanted lights are challenging.  I was worrying that some artificial
>feature (or in other words, "fake nebulas") will appear because of the
>inaccurate vignetting correction.  By comparing with previous pictures
>and the original slides, I believe some uncommon faint features in
>this picture are "real."  These include:
>   a) the wide and faint blue nebulas around M45 and above Alpha Tau.
>   b) the red north-south elongated nebula between Taurus and Eridanus,
>      which I believe to be Sh2-39.
>   c) a faint blue nebula to the right (west) of the Witch Head Nebula.
>   d) the color of the Milky Way between IC450 and the California Nebula
>      becomes a little green.
>
>Any comments are welcome.
>
>Because my monitor was broken a few days ago, I'm using a backup monitor
>which may not be well calibrated.  If you feel the color very
>uncomfortable, this might be the reason.
>
>Wei-Hao
>
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