Emu drinking from the ocean (100 degrees wide)

alexch (Alex) · #1 24-06-2010, 06:44 PM

Hi All,

I tried stacking the sky in my older wide-field sequences with Deep Sky Stacker and I thought the result is worth sharing.

I took 15 images from a time-lapse sequence of 15-second exposures (Flinders, October 2009), dropped them into DSS and played with the settings until I was satisfied with the result. There is much less noise as you would expect and I was able to recover considerably more detail. As a bonus, the stars are quite round because of shorter exposure time.

The final image is a blend of the stacked sky and stacked ground in Photoshop.

To me, the Emu looks like it is drinking from the ocean (upside down or not...). The field is about 100 degrees wide (Nikon D700 with 14-24mm lens).

I attached the small version of the image I processed in DSS and links to larger versions are below.

5 Mega-pixel DSS processed image showing the sky detail:
http://www.terrastro.com/iis/emu-dss.jpg

And larger old single sky shot:
http://www.terrastro.com/iis/emu-original.jpg

Cheers,
Alex

multiweb (Marc) · #2 24-06-2010, 06:54 PM

Man! I just love your work mate. Colours are unreal. Almost look like those comics fantasy shots of far away planets.

JD2439975 (Justin) · #3 24-06-2010, 07:09 PM

That's orsm Alex, nice one.

Bassnut (Fred) · #4 24-06-2010, 07:12 PM

wow, mega moody.

Octane (Humayun) · #5 24-06-2010, 07:12 PM

Alex,

Unreal -- I /love/ these!

H

gregbradley · #6 24-06-2010, 07:27 PM

Very arty shot. That lovely bay in the foreground really makes it.

Australia has so many gorgeous spots.

Greg.

DavidU (Dave) · #7 24-06-2010, 07:47 PM

Much awesomeness there !

dugnsuz (Doug) · #8 25-06-2010, 09:51 AM

Another cracking image
Doug

h0ughy (David) · #9 25-06-2010, 10:11 AM

fabulous

SkyViking (Rolf) · #10 25-06-2010, 11:11 AM

Spectacular image! I love the composition, and yes the colours are fantastic. The Milky Way really displays some beautiful shades in that image. Wery well done.

Tamtarn · #11 25-06-2010, 02:47 PM

A sensational image Alex. It's now my desktop

Just browsed through your web pages. You have a great selection of widefields.

Love the Moon Shine video

Barb

rogerg (Roger) · #12 25-06-2010, 03:09 PM

Great pic, again!

But .... isn't the emu actually lying on it's back? isn't it's beak up in the air? and so it's not drinking but rather bathing?

alexch (Alex) · #13 25-06-2010, 03:22 PM

Thanks everyone for the comments, much appreciated.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rogerg

Great pic, again!

But .... isn't the emu actually lying on it's back? isn't it's beak up in the air? and so it's not drinking but rather bathing?

It is, and I mentioned that in my post... But I just couldn't see it bathing in the cold ocean

rogerg (Roger) · #14 25-06-2010, 03:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by alexch

It is, and I mentioned that in my post... But I just couldn't see it bathing in the cold ocean

True, sorry, I should have read your post more carefully.

marc4darkskies (Marcus) · #15 26-06-2010, 09:35 AM

Hey Alex - you could make some $$ out of these you know. People would buy posters like this for sure!

Cheers, Marcus

barx1963 (Malcolm) · #16 26-06-2010, 11:02 AM

Absolutely one of the best images I have seen. Apart from the pure beauty of it, being so wide you really get the idea of the Milky way as a galaxy, just awesome.

spearo (Frank) · #17 26-06-2010, 05:19 PM

top notch!
great work!
frank

Hagar (Doug) · #18 28-06-2010, 11:21 AM

Another Fantastic image. I just love these images with the ocean background.