This challenge, essentially a free study, presented an opportunity to obtain another Milky Way shot and finally try out a pure astronomy shot in a challenge. These shots are very difficult to process and present but this was the best I could do on the one night available to me in this challenge period. Thanks to Kirbic for coming over to shoot some astrophotos with me, we had a great time and will do it again!
2 minute exposure with camera on top of a tracking telescope. Over the two minute period, the camera moved enough to blur the trees and dome of the observatory, which I hope won't lose me too many points.
Post processing was extensive due to the nature of the shot and the light pollution near the horizon:
-Raw Conversion (no sharpening)
-Crop and rotate
-Levels adjustment layer - stretch histogram to darken background sky
-Noise removal
-Desat yellows for light pollution
-Curves to enhance sky contrast
-Duplicate layer, gaussian blur, decrease brightness, blend in screen mode (essentially an unsharp mask routine)
-More curves to enhance contrast
-Early on I also selected out the observatory to keep it from darkening too much in the subsequent adjustments.
-Finally, a USM at 35/200/5 to pop the tones and give a final boost to contrast.
-Resize and save for web
Statistics
Place: 107 out of 200 Avg (all users): 5.4585 Avg (commenters): 6.4211 Avg (participants): 5.1157 Avg (non-participants): 5.7727 Views since voting: 1453 Views during voting: 416 Votes: 253 Comments: 22 Favorites: 1 (view)
While this is cetainly better than I could do with my equipment, the motion blur of the foreground distracts. The title is a bit of a stretch as well. I'll give you a neutral 6.
Wow, this seems exciting and scary to me at the same time, just imagine that is right above us and most of us can't see it that way. I am not too crazy about the color in the bottom half of the sky, but I don't think this is anything you could control ( or at least I couldn't ) so I won't let that effect my vote. Wonderful shot to have in your collection.
Wow, spectacular shot! I look forward to finding out how you got this. Strange thing about this shot is there appears to be movement in the trees but not the stars -- from the wind? Or you had the camera mounted on a telescope with a motor drive. In any event, a 10.
This is pretty incredible when you think about it. The vastness of the space above us is actually a multitude of lights and colors and wow - you really nailed it. The blurred silhouettes of the trees may be due to dim lighting, but I almost think you could remove that portion, except for maybe just a small bit for perspective and you'd have an almost perfect image.
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