Quote:
Originally Posted by Placidus
Let's give a concrete example. Let's say we've photographed a globular cluster. These things are about 10 billion years old. Most of the stars are very small and very cool, and therefore orange-red. Otherwise, they would not have lasted ten billion years. Hot blue stars last only a million years or so before exploding as a supernova. But a small number of the stars in a globular cluster have recently collided and merged, to form larger, hotter, and therefore bluer stars called "blue stragglers". So, if you show your globular cluster and you show all the stars as a beautiful blue, it should be a conscious decision to "tell a lie about what is up there", rather than just making a terrible gaffe.
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Thanks Mike, I really love that example, and yes, understanding the elements of the celestial objects and its age, distance and brightness etc should give one a better understanding of the characteristics of the colour reflection, and this should then align with post-processing decisions. However, the equipment that you use could also potentially undermine the integrity of those elements. I think, also, it is the way that you stack in photoshop that matters, and where I use some images that may lose faint details and yet enhance the blacks, I reduce the opacity of that and layer that to an image that has those outer and fainter details, so it balances it out.
I am definitely on the same page in terms of being an amateur and the whole process of learning, which is exactly what I want to do. I think you are right, a bad astrophoto are really those who are overzealous in terms of sharpening etc.
I am really loving this whole process!