This is a moonlit nightscape of the historic Hearst Church in Pinos Altos, New Mexico, at 7000 feet altitude (thus the name “High Pines”) and on the Continental Divide. In the sky above, the Big Dipper is at right, and Polaris is at left over the church. The Hearst Church opened in May 1898, built with money raised by the local mining families in Pinos Altos, and with a donation from Phoebe Hearst, wife of the mining mogul in the area and senator George Hearst, parents of newspaper tychoon William Randolph Hearst. Gold from the Pinos Altos Hearst mines decorates the Hearst Castle in California. The Hearst Church now serves as an art gallery for the Grant County Art Guild. See http://gcag.org for information. This is a single 45-second exposure at f/2.8 with the 24mm lens and Canon 6D at ISO 800. Power lines and poles were cloned out. Taken January 27, 2015 under the light of a first quarter Moon in hazy skies. Warm light from decorative lights in the yard of the house across the street added the reddish glow to the adobe brick. Very nice. Subtle star diffraction spikes added with Astronomy Tools actions.
The Orion Nebula, M42 and M43, with surrounding associated nebula and star clusters, such as the Running Man Nebula above (NGC 1975) and blue star cluster above it, NGC 1981. This is one of the most often photographed but most challenging dee-sky objects to shoot, because of its huge range in brightess from the bright core to the outlying wisps of dim red nebulosity. Capturing it all in one frame requires a form of “high-dynamic-range” techniques: shooting several different exposures and manually stacking and masking them in Photoshop. I shot and processed this image for use as a demonstration and tutorial image for my Photoshop for Astronomy Workshops. This demonstrates the methods and result of masking several different exposures to retain details in the bright core while also bringing out the faintest outlying bits of nebulosity, compressing the dynamic range tremendously. All processing was done with Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop CC 2014. Total processing time from Raw to final was about 3 hours. The image is made of: - 10 x 6 minute exposures, Median combined in a registered stack, at ISO 1250. The median stacking reduced, but did not completely eliminate, the satellite trails from geosatatonary satellites that were in almost every frame. - 5 x 1.5 minute exposures at ISO 1250 for the mid-level brightness areas, blended using Darken mode - 5 x 30 second exposures at ISO 800 for the bright core, blended using Darken mode - 5 x 30 second exposures at ISO 400 for the brightest part of the central core around the Trapezium stars, blended using Darken mode Shorter exposure layers were stacked and masked using a luminance mask: created by Command Clicking on the RGB Channel to select just the highlights of that exposure then using that selection to create a mask to reveal the core area and hide the rest. Additional top-level layers were added for enhancing detail overall: - Luminosity layer created from the Red channel, and blended using Luninosity blend mode - Sharpening layer created from a “stamped” merge of all layers and with a High Pass filter applied, and blended using Overlay blend mode. All adjustments and filters were applied through adjustment latyers and smart filters so every aspect of the image could be re-tweaked at will later. Masks were blurred using Feathering in the Mask Properties panel. No destructive filtering to images or masks was employed. All frames were taken with a filter-modified Canon 5D MkII and through a TMB 92mm apo refractor at f/5.5 with a Hotech field flattener. Diffraction spikes on stars added with Noel Carboni’s Astronomy Tools actions. Final noise reduction and debanding applied using Nik Collection DFine. Taken from Silver City, New Mexico, January 22, 2015.
