Milky Way - Sagittarius

[2020BC]

Subject: The Milky Way Centred around Sagittarius
Exposure: 18 x 4 mins (72 mins) 800 ISO 12 Darks 10 Flats
Camera: Canon 350D unmod
Lens: Canon 50mm f1.8 @f6.3
Mount: Meade LXD-75 unguided
Location: Canberra, PM 05Aug07
Process: Alignment, flats and darks in MaxDSLR. Photoshop curves, etc. cropped to approx. 12 degrees field of view.

To view a detailed version of this image Click Here (1.4 MB) (http://www.zodiaclight.com/images/SagittariusMilkyWay50mm18x4Minsf1-8atf6-3ISO800AveragedDarksFlat06Aug07Post erB.jpg)

[Garyh]

Hi Bill.
Another lovely sharp image!!
I hope you don`t mind, but I had a little play with the image to see if I could get it looking like what my modded canon captures. Actually the modded canon has more red but trying to get a nice color balance as possible.
I adjusted the levels (more red) and color balance in shadows and highlights and added 20 in saturation.
Just curious to see what I could do with a unmodded camera image.
cheers Gary

[Ric]

Great image Bill, such a detailed image and so many interesting sights to see in that one.

Cheers

[h0ughy]

nice image that one, I tried a similar thing at duckadang with some mixed results

[Geoff45]

Interesting. Here is a pic I took with an unmodded 350D and the colours seem to lie between Bill's version and Gary's modded version. Hard to know what the real colours are.
Geoff

[jjjnettie]

Then of course there is the differences between what you see on a CRT and LCD.
But it's a wonderful image. Don't you wish those dust clouds would clear away though? I often try to imagine what lurks behind them.

[Geoff45]

This is a bit off thread, but in fact with the proper hardware you should be able to calibrate any two monitors so that they show the same colour for the same image. (See http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/monitor_calibration.htm or google "monitor calibration")

[leon]

Great stuff there Bill, very crisp and clean, well done.

Leon

[2020BC]

Cheers folks.

Regardless of whether we've got the color balance exactly right there's no getting away from the fact we all capture that dust in the Milky Way as brown.

I sat in on a CAS talk given by an ANU professor last year and he described how the brown dust consists mostly of superfine Carbon "soot" that was emitted in the past from older exploded stars. He said the color if you could see it would be like a very bad smog. He called it the exhaust from the great star factories.:lol:.

There is a gap in the dust. It's the M24 the Sagittarius star cloud. The Milky way is a spiral galaxy with arms and the dust is too thick in most places for us to see much toward the centre of the galaxy, however I'm told that M24 is actually a break in the cloud arm that is facing us. Through that gap (M24) we actually see into the next arm. Nice. But yeah, the dust and stuff in that next inner arm prevents us from seeing what's beyond. Infrared helps. It can penetrate the haze much better than visible light, and of course X-rays, etc..

[Dr Nick]

Very well done! ;)