The Galactic Core

[gregbradley]

189694On a very clear, cold and dark night I took a series of mirrorless camera images with my Polarie and tripod using the fabulous Zeiss FE 55 F1.8 lens (at F4 60 seconds ISO3200).

Our Galactic Core which this image shows seems to be a very turbulent place.

http://www.pbase.com/image/161597873/large

http://www.pbase.com/gregbradley/image/161597873/original large size

Greg.

[Paul Haese]

Looks good Greg. Expansive view of the core area. Maybe just a little purple looking in areas. The golden yellow is good and the dark dust lanes look right to me.

[RickS]

I like the colours but think it suffers a bit from being displayed at relatively low res (even the "original" size isn't that large.) I presume it is stunning at full res!

Cheers,
Rick.

[Somnium]

Really good stuff Greg, you have captured the dust extremely well

[gregbradley]

Thanks Paul. I am not 100% sure of the calibration of this monitor despite using a colour munki. There are some Ha areas that are a bit red/purplish.



Sure. I'll post a larger one later.



Thanks. I've always liked these camera lens shots. They get the big picture.

Greg.

[strongmanmike]

Looks pretty good Greggles :thumbsup:...I have to say though, I am finding your recent images look a bit black clipped and very high and harsh contrast so I can't enjoy them properly :shrug: either your monitor or mine I guess? :shrug:

Mike

[gregbradley]

Recent images is a bit of a generalisation but I get what you are saying and have modified my processing to some degree recently to preserve more of the black area. Some steps have seemed to cut it back and I am working on keeping more space to the left of the histogram as its easy to get boxed in. As far as high contrast, perhaps a tad, it could be a personal preference there. Its something I'll keep an eye on when I am processing my images as again its probably a couple of steps designed to reduce the effects of minor light pollution I get here. It would be less needed when I image at my dark site. The luxury of full dark site data is important.

Thanks for the feedback.

Greg.

[RobF]

I'd be interested to swim around in the full image too please Greg.
Its tough to get perfect colour balance on these Milky Way shots. Agree maybe a little too much purple, but a very striking and impressive image.

[strongmanmike]

Ok fair enough, I just keep finding myself thinking dang I wish Greg wouldn't cut it like that and make it so harsh, there looks like there is more there :doh: I was thinking monior but most other images look great on my monitor so there must be something in what I am tellen'ya :shrug: :thumbsup:

Mike

[RB]

Greg, I'm with Mike on this, I enjoy your images but I find myself saying the same thing as Mike.
Also I find the images you upload on IIS are quite small, I realise that the 200kb limit is a big factor, but I find myself wishing they were a bit bigger in dimension at the expense of a tiny bit of quality loss.
Personally I don't like/bother visiting external sites unless I really enjoy the attached image first.

RB

[Placidus]

Hi, Greg,

Looks exactly like my now distant memories of scuba diving on the great barrier reef. That is a giant clam.

Best,
Mike

[DJScotty]

Greg, I love these shots. Shows the vast expanse that is our galaxy.
Maybe it is purple, but I think that is up to the individual image processor. All subjective and aesthetic! :D

DJ Scotty

[gregbradley]

Thanks Rob.



Thanks Mike, I'll take it onboard. I am in the process of reviewing my processing routines anyway as a normal wanting to upgrade everything and continue to learn and improve in the art.



I standardly link 2 links to my images one is regular size for pbase which is a bit smaller and the other is a 2000 pixel image which is usually pretty large. With the Proline 16803 images they are really large and with the Trius they are still large but smaller as the images they take are largely smaller anyway. DSLR type images I suppose are in the middle and this is short exposure (7 minutes) so the image won't take 100% pixel viewing. So sometimes a smaller image suits the noise level or total exposure level. It depends on the total exposure time really. As far as harshness or black clipping I am certainly working on improving the times when some black clipping has occurred a bit.

I just realised you mean a larger IIS thumbnail that is 200kb in size. Yes I have been resizing to 300 pixels to get it to the 200kb size but I could lower the quality and keep the image larger. That's what you meant right?



Thanks for that. I'll revisit the colours in a repro.

I plan on doing a repro on this one as I had trouble with CCDstack and Deep Sky Stacker and since gotten DSS to work. It seems to prefer TIFF files rather than jpegs.



Thanks Mike.

[RB]

Good onya Greg Re: Black clipping.

Yes I mean the IIS image (200kb).
At 300 pixels it's not much bigger than the original thumbnail preview that appears on the bottom of your original post.
I reckon you could go bigger, say 800 or 900 pixels and not loose much quality and still be under the 200kb limit.
Give it a try.

RB

[gregbradley]

A redo posted, no black clipping, less harsh and larger file sizes to look at:

http://www.pbase.com/image/161597873/large regular size

http://www.pbase.com/gregbradley/ima...97873/original large size

Greg