ajamesmccarthy
patreon
Messier 78- 20 hours worth of exposures to resolve this
🕑 Added 2021-11-10 21:50:09 +0000 UTCPeople often ask how these images look without edits, so here it is:
This type of photography is completely different than normal photography. You can't just point and shoot, as these objects are so faint as to be practically invisible. You collect data for many hours, and the image is resolved entirely through processing. This is what that exact same data looks like after a linear stretch, basically brightening the image:
That image has a strong green bias due to the additional green pixel in my color camera (most color cameras have twice as many green pixels than red or blue) so it has to be color balanced very precisely to get the natural colors. The reflection nebula is actually blue, and the emission nebula is actually red. Blue+green light= turquoise (hence the turqoise color here) and red+green light=yellow (hence why the blobs of gas are more yellow). There is also a color cast in a gradient across the whole image due to light pollution. All this has to be corrected for in processing.
To those of you who are part of my "Aspiring astrophotographers" patreon tier, this 32bit raw image was uploaded to the "One shot color" folder in my dropbox. If you take a crack at editing it, please share with me! As always feel free to ask questions.
Comments
Love these short and sweet write ups. Learn a lot, thanks Andrew.
