Barred spiral galaxy NGC 2903.

[ollypenrice]

Thanks again folks

As for diffraction spikes....they are a matter of personal choice if you've got a refractor, and I find thay add a bit of sparkle to an image if used on selective stars. One could of course cover the entire image with them and thus stand a chance of getting an APOD

Cheers

Rob

But don't forget the saturation!!

Olly

[foundaplanet]

Love it,

Love the stars, and I'm all for the space art approach...

[JCJC]

Fantastic Rob! The detail in the core is great and the star colour, particularly the bright golden one, adds a 'sparkle'.

I can see the argument either way for the diffraction spikes, that's what's good about refractors I suppose, you can choose whether to add them or not.

Jordan

[blackparticle]

Ok.. Now I am puzzled.

How can you choose to add the diffraction spikes or not?

[Big Jim Slade]

Ok.. Now I am puzzled.

How can you choose to add the diffraction spikes or not?

Through the magic of Photoshop of course!

Half the pics you see have been airbrushed more than Kate Winselt after a couple of bacon butties.

[RobH]

Half the pics you see have been airbrushed more than Kate Winselt after a couple of bacon butties.

:D:D

I use Noel Carboni's starspikes pro....it gives complete control of the angle, diffusion , length etc.

There is a simpler version in his 'Noel's actions' package too.

I add them as a separate layer, and then erase the ones I don't want and adjust the opacity of what remains until it looks right to me.

Rob

[rich_t]

The galaxy detail is superb and the background looks perfectly calibrated. The whole image shows no signs of stretching, very nice.

I like the selective use of spikes, in Star Spikes Pro 2 you can individually select which stars will have the spikes.

Cheers,

Rich.

[saturn5]

Simply stunning,beautifully processed and agree 100% with your space art comment.

If only i could capture something remotely like this to be "arty" with.

[Staypuft]

Very nice!

[MartinB]

Missed this! Beautiful work Rob. Loads of data and then a finely crafted process.

Star spikes - I like the way you have used them, used well they can give an extra sense of vibrancy. Stars twinkle after all.

I see you binned for the galaxy and did unbinned for the stars and I understand the reason why. It's difficult to argue against binning for the galaxy since the colour is for hue and saturation, let the luminence do the work on the detail. With the exposure lengths you've used your stars will be bloated compared with unbinned, I would be interested to see how you found binning the outer star field using much shorter exposures - around 30 seconds say. Doing this I find the stars don't bloat at longer focal lengths.

[dc509]

Cracking image - very impressive

d

[Leo.A]

That's absolutely spectacular!

I aspire to even get an image 1/1000th of this quality.

[whirlpool5194]

One of my many favourites, nicely done Rob...

Wp

[Rossco72]

Looks really nice to me Rob. Well done.

[peter shah]

As usual stunning! tell me about work, cant wait to be able to get back out and do something myself