Re: [APML] Cocoon Nebula

[Matt BenDaniel <matt@starmatt.com>]

At 10:30 AM 11/6/2001 +0100, Mikkel Steine wrote:

>Hi Matt,
>
>> http://people.ne.mediaone.net/mbendaniel1/gallery/astro/cocoon.html
>
>Beautiful image! You really brought out the dark nebulae and - well - a LOT of
>stars. 

Thanks! Yes, 184,000+ stars.<g>

>To me the star in the top of the frame and the nebula seems a bit too
>blue. I know the star is supposed to be blue, but the blue halo around it seems
>too much. Might is be because blue light is shattered more than the other
>wavelengths? The nebula also has more blue to it than previous images I've seen
>of the Cocoon. What is the right color balance... that has been covered in
>lengthy discussions before.

You have an excellent eye. I know you are correct. The accentuated blue star halo was due to cirrus clouds drifting across it. Is it unaesthetic? I have just uploaded a revision that suppresses these features slightly.

>I have one more comment. When scaling down images of very high resolution with a
>great amount of point sources like this image it seems the anti-aliasing
>procedures in Photoshop brings out the fainter stars too much. The faint stars
>are bloated so they look brighter than they are in the original. I realize that
>bicubic resampling is the best Photoshop can offer, or is it? Is there a
>technique around this "problem"? Although lots of stars often look very nice,
>it's also a bit unrealistic when you compare m8 and m11 stars in the image. They
>almost have the same size in the image! I realize the size of the pixels is the
>problem here, but what I am asking is if there is a way to remedy this before
>publishing on the Internet?

Ron Wodaski recommends http://www.genuinefractals.com/ as a better solution for resizing images. Perhaps it is time I buy it.

I did some star shaping before resizing in the version I just uploaded. Is this new version better?

(I saved the old version just in case you/people like that one better.)

Mikkel, I am very impressed by your ability to discern these features. I see from your web site that you are a serious visual observer. I have found that skilled visual observers SEE more than most people (including astrophotographers). For example, I showed a print of my Moonbow to a serious visual observer in Arizona and he quickly saw a second moonbow in the image! No one had seen that before including me. It can be seen in the web image if you look carefully:
http://people.ne.mediaone.net/mbendaniel/gallery/astro/moonbow.html

Thank You!
--
Matt BenDaniel
http://starmatt.com


--  APML Archives at <http://astro.umsystem.edu/apml/>  ---
             Unsubscribe at <majordomo@seds.org>