Weeping Angel

Andy01 (Andy) · #1 08-06-2019, 12:53 PM

My final interpretation of NGC 3576 from this data set.

It's Pro Photo award season, so I thought why not, let's run a starless image by the Victorian Photo judges later next week. (probably an extremely risky, bad idea lol)

9000 light years distant, The Statue of Liberty nebula's distinctive shapes are formed by stellar winds from stars born in dark, dusty regions of space. Removing these stars reveals a twisted vortex of swirling clouds of interacting gases.

Completely remapped colour wise, I once again find myself singing the praises of Starnet++. Truly the best star removal software out there imo

Admittedly, not quite as detailed as PW's recent image here of the same target, but I'm happy that my gear certainly gives more than decent bang for one's imaging buck. In this starless presentation, Lady Liberty kinda has a more sinister look - reminiscent of the "Weeping Angels" from Dr.Who

Anyhoo - I've now moved on to Stellar crustaceans, so thanks for looking - C&C welcome as always.

Peter Ward · #2 08-06-2019, 01:39 PM

From an AP perspective my feelings are mixed, but from a photographic art perspective, it reminds me of a Seurat painting....has an unusual soft pastel look ... which is quite beguiling. Nice.

keller60 (Bill) · #3 08-06-2019, 01:53 PM

Very different. Very Art Nouveau and would make a nice wall print.

multiweb (Marc) · #4 08-06-2019, 02:15 PM

Nice colours.

willik (Willik) · #5 08-06-2019, 02:23 PM

Beautiful colours but nice to see some stars in the image Andy but still a nice image

Martin

gregbradley · #6 08-06-2019, 05:12 PM

A fabulous image Andy. I'll have to check out this starless caper myself.

Greg.

Andy01 (Andy) · #7 08-06-2019, 05:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Peter Ward

From an AP perspective my feelings are mixed, but from a photographic art perspective, it reminds me of a Seurat painting....has an unusual soft pastel look ... which is quite beguiling. Nice.

Thanks Peter, I'm a big fan of Seurat and all the Post-Impressionists, so I'll take that!

I've been trialling the TOPAZ suite of Plug-ins for PS - Excellent Noise reduction and Sharpening, all machine learning AI stuff - works well for Astro images as you can see here.

Quote:

Originally Posted by keller60

Very different. Very Art Nouveau and would make a nice wall print.

Cheers - hopefully the judges see it that way too

Quote:

Originally Posted by multiweb

Nice colours.

Thanks Marc, wasn't completely happy with my last rendering, but this one seems on the money.

Quote:

Originally Posted by willik

Beautiful colours but nice to see some stars in the image Andy but still a nice image

Martin

Thanks Martin - I'm sure we've all seen this one with stars before, so this a change up from the norm

Quote:

Originally Posted by gregbradley

A fabulous image Andy. I'll have to check out this starless caper myself.

Greg.

Good on ya Greg! Starless images can be intriguing and certainly not applicable for every subject - but revealing the structures and forces at work in certain nebulae without those pesky stars interfering is a revelation!

Go on - you know you want to

Atmos (Colin) · #8 08-06-2019, 05:55 PM

I’ve tried some of the different noise reduction routines (can’t remember if I did topaz) but I found that many of them over softened astro images because unless you get LOTS of exposure it detects them as being overly noisy.

You’ve captured a lot of fine details but it looks like the noise reduction has left everything very pastel (painting) like. Very nice image but I think the noise reduction is a little strong for my personal astro tastes