Comet Lovejoy (C/2014 Q2) and the Pleiades (M45)
28x30sec at ISO 12800
180mm f/4
Nikon D750
Clear sky, no moon, new camera, and news of a comet in Taurus -- who cares if it's a little cold out there....
Posted to Slider's Sunday, even though the post-processing is relatively mild by that group's standards. In particular, let me emphasize that Lovejoy and the Pleiades really did share this little section of the sky. But posted to SS because it used a new (to me) color processing strategy.
Averaged the multiple (28) images in DeepSkyStacker, and imported the result into the Gimp, along with -- and this was the innovation -- an extra copy of the last exposure as a new layer. I roughly white-balanced out the skyglow in the new layer, smoothed it, bumped up the contrast (which has the effect of increasing saturation), and made this the "color" layer to emphasize the actual green and blue colors of the comet and stars.
Comet Lovejoy (C/2014 Q2) and the Pleiades (M45)
28x30sec at ISO 12800
180mm f/4
Nikon D750
Clear sky, no moon, new camera, and news of a comet in Taurus -- who cares if it's a little cold out there....
Posted to Slider's Sunday, even though the post-processing is relatively mild by that group's standards. In particular, let me emphasize that Lovejoy and the Pleiades really did share this little section of the sky. But posted to SS because it used a new (to me) color processing strategy.
Averaged the multiple (28) images in DeepSkyStacker, and imported the result into the Gimp, along with -- and this was the innovation -- an extra copy of the last exposure as a new layer. I roughly white-balanced out the skyglow in the new layer, smoothed it, bumped up the contrast (which has the effect of increasing saturation), and made this the "color" layer to emphasize the actual green and blue colors of the comet and stars.