On Fri, 20 Feb 2004 20:44:16 +0100, Jaime Vives Piqueres
<jai### [at] ignoranciaorg> wrote:

>I'm having fun playing with spectral data, media and functions. Not that 
>I know what I'm doing... but it looks nice and somewhat similar to real 
>planetray nebulae. My apologies to the astronomers out there... it is 
>surely not very astrophotorealist.

No apologies necessary.  The "realism" of an astrophoto depends a lot
on the film or CCD, the filters used, how adept the photographer is
with PhotoShop, and in the case of emission nebulae such as
planetaries, which color you assign to each spectral line.

The colors i see in most photos of planetaries are red and cyan, which
are probably what we would see if our eyes were sensitive enough.
Your renderings look more like Hubble shots, which aren't necessarily
intended to look "true color," whatever that might be.

For those of you who don't know, beautiful astrophotos bear little
resemblance to what our eyes perceive, which makes the very concept of
photorealism in astrophotography rather slippery.  (If you got a
telescope for Christmas and are disappointed with the view, don't
blame the telescope; blame the marketers.  And throw away the 4mm
eyepiece; it's useless.)

FWIW, one planetary that does appear in color to my eyes is the Saturn
Nebula (NGC 7009) in Aquarius.  If you have one of those new
roboscopes, such as the Nexstar or ETX, it is almost certainly in the
telescope's database, but you'll have to wait a few months before it
becomes visible in the morning skies again.

-- 
------------------- Richard Callwood III --------------------
~  U.S. Virgin Islands    ~  USDA zone 11  ~  18.3N, 64.9W  ~
~  eastern Massachusetts  ~  USDA zone 6 (1992-95)          ~
--------------- http://cac.uvi.edu/staff/rc3/ ---------------

Post a reply to this message