Friday, 3 September 2010

SkyWatch Friday Season 4, Episode 8

Thank you to the Sky watch team who organise this weekly meme. To see more skies in all their glory across the blue planet, click here. 

It was a fine clear night so we decided to try a little astrophotography. There is a lot of light pollution in our area so our original shots, SOOC,  looked like this:-

Using the tools in Lightroom 3 I fiddled.  I found Blue Hi-Contrast Filter returned the sky to something like its 'normal' colour. Increasing the exposure revealed more stars and taking the black to its limit made a more interesting shot. Barry experimented with stacking photos a while ago and it is something we will investigate further. This photo is not stacked. 
Looking at this makes me realise afresh that we see only one tenth of what is up there. It looks pretty crowded, doesn't it?

13 comments:

  1. It's amazing! Honest. That first photo looks like you took a shot of some woodchipped wallpaper. It is amazing that some clever fiddling makes it look like the second photo.
    There must be life out there somewhere, don't you think?
    ;-)

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  2. Wonderfully crowded. You wonder what it's like close up.

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  3. wow..very crowded indeed..thanks for dropping in at backpacker

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  4. Awesome shots of the stars and sky! It is amazing how many stars are really out there. Happy skywatching.

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  5. the sky is beautiful to lie back and watch... interesting, thanks :-)

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  6. Wow, what a difference that made! Look at all those stars! Awesome!

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  7. You did a great job processing that photograph!

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  8. Amazing how tools can help us make the photos we wanted to take in the first place. Lovely!

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  9. What a terrific capture, Janice! I've had the same thing happen with a couple of moon shots and I used the tools in Picasa to create the contrast and darken the sky. It doesn't always work perfectly but does a great job most of the time. Love your "starry, starry night"! Hope you have a great weekend!

    Sylvia

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  10. The second shot is awesome. It is crowded over there.

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  11. wow, I haven't seen stars as many as that especially now that it is raining here everyday.

    thanks for visiting topics on earth and have a great weekend!

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  12. It's amazing what you can do! Great shots of the stars!

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  13. Amazing what emerged from the first photo! A great idea to present both photos! Yes! The world up there could be more crowded than we realise!

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