Big Dipper Setting Over Telescope Dome

[astrostu]

I took this snapshot Thursday night after photographing the constellation Aquila. This photo was taken with a 35 mm lens at f/1.4 and ISO 200 for 15 seconds. It also had a cross-screen filter on to get the diffraction spikes on the stars.

I went through A LOT of editing, including removing vignetting, correcting color, removing color from the dome, removing two chimneys, removing something else, removing tree duplicates due to wind, removing a protrusion from the dome, and removing an airplane.

This is probably some of my most "advanced" PhotoShop work in terms of removing stuff I didn't want in there and getting it to look more the way I wanted than the raw photo. Hence, I'm also attaching the original (first one) for comparison.

I know I didn't do the best of jobs getting rid of that main chimney thing, but I'm still looking for C&C.

 

[Kanikula]

Fab work! Well done!! However im finding those trees too distracting......

 

[Antarctican]

Lovely shot of the dipper!!!

 

[ClarkKent]

Thats absolutely fantastic. I wish I had one of those to get space pics.

 

[Miaow]

Nice work

 

[JTHphoto]

great shot of ursa major, i like the colors in the second shot way better... :thumbup:

 

[astrostu]

Thanks guys!

 

[Royster]

I like this a lot. Plastic spanner would be the best person to c&c here, this is his kind of shots. Is he still around?

 

[grammaterri]

I know I am wierd, so keep that in mind, but I like the first picture best. tho the trees are a little distracting, the sky looks more like what my eye would see if I was standing where you were standing.

but it does amaze me how great everyone is at editing!

 

[Scooter]

Awesome!

 

[William]

I have an edit, if you make it okay. I love the pic.

 

[LaFoto]

Wow. Cool edit! I like it a lot. It is just so nice to see how the "handle" of the "dipper" seems to wrap around the dome of the observatory!

If there are any "too" distracting" trees (true fact is that I personally am not too bothered by them!), it would be the black one ... but I like the sunlit yellow ones! To my mind, they don't take away any from the overall image.

 

[astrostu]

Thanks, LaFoto. I actually agree (and disagree with those who say otherwise) - I like the trees. Though the yellow ones (I agree) might be toned down a bit, I think they add balance to the blue of the sky and help make the scene seem less empty. And note that they weren't lit by the sun, but rather by a few very bright sodium (those bright yellow ones) lamps that are by the observatory exit.

I showed it to the observatory manager and he also liked how the handle wraps around the dome - he'd never noticed it before (and he's been working there for a few decades).

William - you can post your edit, but I think you did (and then removed it?) since I got an e-mail with a link to it. Though you got rid of the trees, you also got rid of the bottom left and top right corner stars of the dipper, so it's no longer recognizable as the dipper. You also didn't match the lightness of the sky in that section of the image, so I can see the brush strokes of the clone stamp (or paintbrush). I'm not trying to "diss" your edit and I'm glad you like the photo, but I think the way you did the edit took away from the original intent of showing that asterism*.


* An asterism is a popular "constellation" that's not one of the officially recognized 88 constellations in the sky. Both dippers (big and little) are asterisms, the "real" constellations being much larger with more stars, Ursa major and minor.

 

[LaFoto]

Sure. How silly of me to even assume for a fraction of a second that it could have been THE SUN that lit up those trees when it was night and THE STARS WERE OUT

.

Nevertheless, I sure like the yellow against the blue! Sun or sodium lights (OF COURSE!)...

 

[William]

I'm not suggesting mine was better. I just wanted to see if I thought it looked better w/o the trees. Which it didn't (to the skeptics who said it would.) The only distracting tree is the black one. It seems I forgot about the importance of those two stars. =P And those off-colour spots looked like cosmic dust to me, so I left them. (=