http://www.progsoc.uts.edu.au/~sammy...Processing.jpg
I finished my Astronomy masters (done for fun, not for a career change) in 2003. We touched on processing astronomical data in one of the subjects but it was awkward and due to the way the degree was shut down it wasn't persued. At the time you had to use IRAF and other data reduction tools with very awkward language and syntax to extract images to TIFF. I didn't look at it again after I graduated. FITS Liberator came out in 2004 but I never quite got back to looking at it. Well I finally got around to it, downloaded some Hubble FITS data from the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 and put together the above image, which is obviously VERY rough. Fun excercise. Obviously need to put in much more effort if I want nicer images, but I have most of the photo editing skills. Very happy to finally get somewhere with this.
Here's the description I put on Facebook:
My first rough attempt processing Hubble Space Telescope Data to create an image. This is the Ring Nebula (M57). I've taken several FITS data files (sort of a RAW format for astronomical instruments) downloaded from MAST archive. I then ran them through software called FITS Liberator to produce black and white images, then combined and colorised them them in GIMP (Freeware photo editor - like Photoshop without some of the features). This is a VERY rough conversion. The black and white images were already aligned and to the same scale. I've used fairly random colours rather than trying to match filters or optimise the image and as you can see I haven't cleaned up dust and scratches. The bottom right corner cutout comes from the way the Hubble Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 CCDs are laid out. I did this as a self-learning exercise. I intend to improve in following images. If you look at the professionally processed image (probably from a different data set) it's much nicer and no stealth bomber cutout, not to mention better cleanup of noise and scratches and no seams.
