The Milky Way Over The Badlands (2009 Aug 18)

Comments and questions about the APOD on the main view screen.
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Chris Peterson
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Re: 8-18-09 APOD

Post by Chris Peterson » Tue Aug 18, 2009 4:46 pm

orin stepanek wrote:I like his work! I find it quite artistic. He has his own style. To me he is a photographer artist. :)
Like them or dislike them, the point is that his works are fundamentally intended to be aesthetic. They don't represent anything you can see with the eye, and the astronomical parts (the sky) don't generally resemble Milky Way images as they are usually presented, where an attempt is made to boost signal, but otherwise maintain the approximate appearance of the sky to the human eye.

This is artistic expression, not technical or scientific realism. There's nothing wrong with that, but discussion of his work based on the latter isn't likely to be very meaningful.
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Re: The Milky Way Over The Badlands (2009 Aug 18)

Post by Redbone » Tue Aug 18, 2009 5:50 pm

I believe that this particular photograph goes beyond simple illumination and long exposure times. As described, it is a mosiac of four pictures. It also appears that some technique like air-brushing has been applied to blend, soften and contrast the landscape rendering it two dimensional.

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Re: The Milky Way Over The Badlands (2009 Aug 18)

Post by orin stepanek » Tue Aug 18, 2009 5:58 pm

Redbone wrote:I believe that this particular photograph goes beyond simple illumination and long exposure times. As described, it is a mosiac of four pictures. It also appears that some technique like air-brushing has been applied to blend, soften and contrast the landscape rendering it two dimensional.
I don't think it looks 2-D; as each butte seems to be at a different depth. True; each butte seems a bit flat having a 2-D image of their own; but the overall picture seems to pop a bit. :wink:

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Re: The Milky Way Over The Badlands (2009 Aug 18)

Post by neufer » Tue Aug 18, 2009 7:30 pm

orin stepanek wrote:
Redbone wrote:I believe that this particular photograph goes beyond simple illumination and long exposure times. As described, it is a mosiac of four pictures. It also appears that some technique like air-brushing has been applied to blend, soften and contrast the landscape rendering it two dimensional.
I don't think it looks 2-D; as each butte seems to be at a different depth. True; each butte seems a bit flat having a 2-D image of their own; but the overall picture seems to pop a bit. :wink:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop-up_book wrote:
<<The audience for early movable books were adults, not children. It is believed that the first use of movable mechanics appeared in a manuscript for an astrological book in 1306. The Catalan mystic and poet Ramon Llull, of Majorca, used a revolving disc or volvelle to illustrate his theories.

Throughout the centuries volvelles have been used for such diverse purposes as teaching anatomy, making astronomical predictions, creating secret code, and telling fortunes. Astronomicum Caesareum, by Petrus Apianus, which was made for the Holy Roman Emperor Charles in 1540, is full of nested circular pieces revolving on grommets. By 1564 another movable astrological book titled Cosmographia Petri Apiani had been published.

While it can be documented that books with movable parts had been used for centuries, they were almost always used in scholarly works. It was not until the eighteenth century that these techniques were applied to books designed for entertainment, particularly for children.

Some pop-up books receive attention as literary works for the degree of artistry or sophistication which they entail. One example is STAR WARS: A Pop-Up Guide to the Galaxy, by Matthew Reinhart. This book received literary attention for its elaborate pop-ups, and the skill of its imagery, with the New York Times saying that "calling this sophisticated piece of engineering a 'pop-up book' is like calling the Great Wall of China a partition".>>
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Re: The Milky Way Over The Badlands (2009 Aug 18)

Post by ike1518 » Tue Aug 18, 2009 7:55 pm

Man, I just can't accept that picture of the Badlands and I grew up there. Where are the strata layers in the eroded rock? Considering the area illuminated it would have taken hours to accomplish such a lighting project. Plus the lighting is so even - one would think that illumination by flashlight of large areas would be more spotty. I don't know the photographer and no disparagement is implied, but it just doesn't feel right.

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Re: The Milky Way Over The Badlands (2009 Aug 18)

Post by apodman » Tue Aug 18, 2009 8:14 pm

Gee, even with my little automatic digital camera I get "unreal" lighting effects on my first couple of tries with a new and different subject or new and different lighting conditions. For an indoor or close-up example, just the exposure difference from the spread of the flash at different distances makes a noticeable difference in effect. I have to experiment with the white balance and exposure compensation, try a couple of different preset scene modes, or try different zooms from different distances before I get a "real" appearance in my picture. It is not beyond my imagination that someone with a more versatile camera in manual mode and a graphical image manipulation program - especially someone with Wally's prior experience lighting foreground rocks and cliffs as shown in his other photos - can make real scenery look freaky simply by splashing the right amount of light around during the proper length exposure. And taking a couple of test shots with illumination by flashlight is easier than cutting all that cardboard and propping it up anyway.
Last edited by apodman on Tue Aug 18, 2009 8:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: The Milky Way Over The Badlands (2009 Aug 18)

Post by Indigo_Sunrise » Tue Aug 18, 2009 8:25 pm

I had seen this particular image on the TWAN site, and had hoped that APOD wouldn't see it/use it. But only because, IMESHO Mr. Pacholka's images are not (to quote a phrase others have used), aesthetically pleasing. To me. I understand this image wasn't created for me, and that's fine, but his unreal portrayal along with the manipulation in this image is just too much. I've not been a fan of his works and I definitely don't/won't 'digg' this one. :lol:

Anyway, that is just my personal opinion.......

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Re: The Milky Way Over The Badlands (2009 Aug 18)

Post by DavidLeodis » Wed Aug 19, 2009 11:37 am

I do not like the image at all. It looks too fake, though I know it probably is not. For one thing the buttes look too much like cardboard cutouts. I appreciate that many (probably most) do like Wally Pacholka's style of astronomy imagery, but I do not.

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Re: The Milky Way Over The Badlands (2009 Aug 18)

Post by apodman » Wed Aug 19, 2009 1:18 pm

DavidLeodis wrote:many ... do like Wally Pacholka's ... imagery, but I do not
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airy_disk wrote:In optics, the Airy disk (or Airy disc) and Airy pattern are descriptions of the best focused spot of light that a perfect lens with a circular aperture can make, limited by the diffraction of light.

The diffraction pattern resulting from a uniformly-illuminated circular aperture has a bright region in the center, known as the Airy disk which together with the series of concentric bright rings around is called the Airy pattern. Both are named after George Biddell Airy, who first described the phenomenon. The diameter of this pattern is related to the wavelength of the illuminating light and the size of the circular aperture.

The most important application of this concept is in cameras and telescopes. Due to diffraction, the smallest point to which one can focus a beam of light using a lens is the size of the Airy disk. Even if one were able to make a perfect lens, there is still a limit to the resolution of an image created by this lens. An optical system in which the resolution is no longer limited by imperfections in the lenses but only by diffraction is said to be diffraction limited.
My idea of a desirable astronomical image is what I see through a telescope in focus. The Airy disk of each star is as close to a sharp point of light as you can get, and the faint surrounding diffraction circles serve only as frames for each point's crispness.

But the crisp point of a star can't be adequately represented in a digital image where a point of light must be at least as large as a pixel nor in a film image where a point of light must be at least as large as a grain in the emulsion. Bright points are represented not only as brighter but also as larger. This gets worse in guided time exposures where more pixels or more grains are covered by the light of each point, and it gets worse yet in poorly guided or unguided time exposures where points become streaks. In movies, the stars in the sky are made unnaturally huge so they can be seen at all. Then we have Wally's style that puts a real blur on everything (at least in the reduced resolution views we get to see here) to present the picture almost with the wide brush of an impressionist. It's all too far for me from what I see in a focused telescope. A printed poster of a star cluster is a joke compared with the amazing view in even a small telescope on a clear dark night.

This is not to say that astrophotos are not both beautiful and useful. There is simply no other way to see dim or distant objects. But I have yet to see a dark sky photograph that actually looks like the sky. Then again, today's APOD viewed at full size ain't so bad.

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Up the Airy mountain

Post by neufer » Wed Aug 19, 2009 2:38 pm

apodman wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airy_disk wrote:The diffraction pattern resulting from a uniformly-illuminated circular aperture has a bright region in the center, known as the Airy disk which together with the series of concentric bright rings around is called the Airy pattern. Both are named after George Biddell Airy, who first described the phenomenon. The diameter of this pattern is related to the wavelength of the illuminating light and the size of the circular aperture.
  • Up the airy mountain
    Down the rushy glen
    We daren't go a-hunting
    For fear of little men
    - William Allingham 1824–1889
-----------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1006.htm" wrote:
THE NEPTUNE AFFAIR by John H. Lienhard
.
<<The convoluted story of Neptune begins in 1841
when John Adams, a brilliant Cambridge student, took
an interest in the irregular movement of Uranus. Maybe
the irregularity was caused by another, yet undiscovered, planet.

In 1843, Adams went to the Cambridge astronomy professor,
James Challis, with a computational scheme. Challis got the
data Adams needed from the royal astronomer, George Airy.
Adams went to work. Two years later, he knew where to aim
a telescope to find the mystery planet. He asked Challis
to look for it. Challis didn't want to take on the job.
He sent Adams to Airy.

Airy read Adams's work and sent back a note with a minor
question. The question struck Adams as too simple. He figured
the great Airy was writing rhetorically. He didn't bother
to answer. Airy thought the young man was snubbing him.
He wrote an angry letter to Challis, and he wouldn't
even to speak to Adams.

Months later, a young French astronomer, LeVerrier, made the
same calculation Adams had. He also went to Airy. Airy heard
him out, then went to Challis and said, "Let's look for the
planet." Challis finally began looking. But so did German
astronomers. On September 23, 1846, the Berlin Observatory
found the planet we call Neptune. It lay very near
the spot both young men had predicted.

Airy wrote congratulations to LeVerrier. The French Academy
cheered a French triumph and tried to name the planet after
LeVerrier instead of naming it after yet another Roman god.
Then the great English astronomer, John Herschel, announced
that Adams had actually done the calculation first.

The French were furious at Herschel. The English Royal Society
was equally furious at Airy and Challis for dropping the
ball. They subjected them to a public humiliation from
which neither ever fully recovered.

. And what of Adams and LeVerrier?

Well, those two level-headed young men became close friends.
After all, they'd discovered Neptune, hadn't they? This
nationalistic stuff wasn't their fight. But then, a few years
later, a Harvard astronomer showed that their calculations had
been incomplete. They'd both been lucky to find anything at all.

Maybe the crowning irony was the discovery, in 1980, of notes
that Galileo had made in 1612 and 1613. He'd clearly identified
Neptune, but he hadn't realized it was moving in relation
to the stars behind it. He thought it was another star.>>
-----------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.u-net.com/ph/lassell/adams-airy.htm wrote:
Adams, Airy and the Discovery of Neptune in 1846 by Allan Chapman

<<Popular interpretations of this incident place a great deal
of responsibility upon Airy, for not having taken the initiative
to secure a British discovery. Yet this is unjust, and
several key factors must be born in mind:

1. It was not the job of the Astronomer Royal to undertake searches.

2. As an extremely over-worked man, Airy cannot be blamed for being
unavailable when Adams chanced to call upon him without first
having made an appointment. He was abroad on the first occasion,
and at dinner with his family on the second.

3. After Adams left his figures for Neptune's place, when the Airy
family were at dinner on October 21st, 1845, Airy was prompt in writing
to Adams in Cambridge, requesting crucial pieces of mathematical
information about the basis of his computations. Adams never
replied to Airy's letter, nor supplied the requested information.

4. Why was Adams not admitted when Airy was at dinner? We should bear
in mind that at the time Mrs. Richarda Airy was within a week of giving
birth to their ninth child. Her previous pregnancies had been difficult,
and as Airy was deeply attached to his wife, he saw no reason to have
their dinner interrupted by a stranger who wished to see him on a
business matter. There is no evidence to suggest that Adams was willing
to wait until the meal was over in spite of the fact that the Airy
family dined not in the evening, but in the late afternoon.

5. Airy's voluminous surviving correspondence makes it clear that
everyone - from Cabinet Ministers and Admirals, down to servant-girls
wanting to have their fortunes told - wrote to, and occasionally
called-in upon the Astronomer Royal. A man who was so much in the public
eye had to defend his privacy.

6. While all of this was going on, the Royal Observatory was being
rocked by the disclosure of an awful incident. A senior Greenwich
Observatory Assistant, William Richardson, had just been exposed for
having committed an appalling murder. From late October 1846, onwards,
Airy and his Chief Assistant, the Revd Robert Main, made appearances
before the courts at the beginning of Richardson's trial. Airy was
acutely embarrassed by the regular appearance of his name, as
Richardson's employer, in the newspaper columns reporting
the details of a crime which hinged upon sex, incest,
and the burial of a body in a shallow grave.

7. And if this was not enough, the year 1845-1856 was probably the
busiest in Airy's professional life. For in addition to astronomy,
he was immersed in the business of the Railway Gauge Commission.
As the Scientific Commissioner, he was travelling around Britain
testing trains & interviewing engineers. It was this Commission, and
Airy's scientific advice, which settled British (and, later American)
railway gauges at the "Standard Gauge" of 4 feet 8 1/2 inches.
..........................................................
John Couch Adams, while a brilliant mathematician, was rather naive
socially, and was said by a senior Cambridge colleague to have behaved,
regarding Neptune, not "like a man who made a great discovery, but like
a bashful boy." In 1846, however, the "bashful boy" was 27 years old.

Urbain Le Verrier, the French co-discovery of Neptune was an older, and
much more business-like individual, and had the determination to see his
computations put to effect. Yet even he was not able to find a French
Observatory that was willing to undertake the search, and was forced
to write to colleagues in Berlin. We often forget that the French
scientific establishment let Le Verrier down no less than the British
was accused of having let down Adams. Once the Berlin sighting
had been made, however, the French were quick to turn it
into a French National discovery.>>
-------------------------------------------------------
Art Neuendorffer

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