Thanks Joe. Yeah, it's cheating. I guess that's why I spend most of my time taking data. No matter how hard I've tried I never get the quality of images we've all seen here and elsewhere. Data is much easier. And no cheating. :) But the skies are supposed to be clear tonight and I don't have any current data projects. Maybe I'll mess around with "M-163" (81 +82) tonight just for fun. patrick On 24 Mar 2010, at 10:54, Joe Bauman wrote:
Magnificent, Patrick! In response to your question, you need to mask and burn etc., to show the core details as well as the faint arms. But in a way that's cheating. It's like a photo at night with a car's bright headlights shining at the photographer: you can print the negative to show the general scene, people on the sidewalk, with washed-out blazing headlights or you can darken the whole scene and show the headlights as sharp round orbs and the people hardly visible. But to show both you have to manipulate the image, "burning in" the headlights with the enlarger or PhotoShop. That results in an unnatural view of the scene. You shouldn't have it both ways. I feel somewhat the same way about manipulating astrophotos. The center is magnitudes brighter than the arms and a photo that in effect dims the center isn't a true report. -- Joe