APOD: North American Nightscape (2021 Jan 29)

[APOD Robot]

North American Nightscape

Explanation: On January 21, light from the Moon near first quarter illuminated the foreground in this snowy mountain and night scene. Known as The Lions, the striking pair of mountain peaks are north of Vancouver, British Colombia, Canada, North America, planet Earth. Poised above the twin summits, left of Deneb alpha star of the constellation Cygnus, are emission regions NGC 7000 and IC 5070. Part of a large star forming complex about 1,500 light-years from Vancouver, they shine with the characteristic red glow of atomic hydrogen gas. Outlines of the bright emission regions suggest their popular names, The North America Nebula and The Pelican Nebula. The well-planned, deep nightscape is a composite of consecutive exposures made with a modified digital camera and telephoto lens. Foreground exposures were made with camera fixed to a tripod, background exposures were made tracking the sky. The result preserves sharp natural detail and reveals a range of brightness and color that your eye can't quite see on its own.

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[Holger Nielsen]

I like coffee. And I like tea. But I do not like them mixed together.

[orin stepanek]

Amazing that we can make beautiful composites! this one I Like!

[Chris Peterson]

I like coffee. And I like tea. But I do not like them mixed together.

While not something our eye can see, a shot like this reveals a reality that, nevertheless, exists.

[XgeoX]

I like coffee. And I like tea. But I do not like them mixed together.

While not something our eye can see, a shot like this reveals a reality that, nevertheless, exists.

Well said! Indeed, I feel people get too hung up on “what the eye would see” to enjoy all the different ways in the spectrum of energy to view objects. They are all valid yet many will call them “fake”
I especially love the composites where they combine Hubble shots with x-ray or gamma rays which let you see the relationship to what we see in visible light.

Eric

[johnnydeep]

North American Nightscape

Explanation: On January 21, light from the Moon near first quarter illuminated the foreground in this snowy mountain and night scene. Known as The Lions, the striking pair of mountain peaks are north of Vancouver, British Colombia, Canada, North America, planet Earth. Poised above the twin summits, left of Deneb alpha star of the constellation Cygnus, are emission regions NGC 7000 and IC 5070. Part of a large star forming complex about 1,500 light-years from Vancouver, they shine with the characteristic red glow of atomic hydrogen gas. Outlines of the bright emission regions suggest their popular names, The North America Nebula and The Pelican Nebula. The well-planned, deep nightscape is a composite of consecutive exposures made with a modified digital camera and telephoto lens. Foreground exposures were made with camera fixed to a tripod, background exposures were made tracking the sky. The result preserves sharp natural detail and reveals a range of brightness and color that your eye can't quite see on its own.

Ok, I see North America clearly in the lighter nebula (NGC 7000), but where the heck is the pelican in IC 5070? Wikipedia shows this pic for IC 5070, but all I can see is maybe a ghost-like apparation:

Click to view full size image

[Ann]

North American Nightscape

Explanation: On January 21, light from the Moon near first quarter illuminated the foreground in this snowy mountain and night scene. Known as The Lions, the striking pair of mountain peaks are north of Vancouver, British Colombia, Canada, North America, planet Earth. Poised above the twin summits, left of Deneb alpha star of the constellation Cygnus, are emission regions NGC 7000 and IC 5070. Part of a large star forming complex about 1,500 light-years from Vancouver, they shine with the characteristic red glow of atomic hydrogen gas. Outlines of the bright emission regions suggest their popular names, The North America Nebula and The Pelican Nebula. The well-planned, deep nightscape is a composite of consecutive exposures made with a modified digital camera and telephoto lens. Foreground exposures were made with camera fixed to a tripod, background exposures were made tracking the sky. The result preserves sharp natural detail and reveals a range of brightness and color that your eye can't quite see on its own.

Ok, I see North America clearly in the lighter nebula (NGC 7000), but where the heck is the pelican in IC 5070? Wikipedia shows this pic for IC 5070, but all I can see is maybe a ghost-like apparation:

Click to view full size image

Here you are:

1 = North America Nebula, NGC 7000

2 = The Pelican Nebula

3 = 68 Cygni, one of the sky's rare naked eye O-type stars.

Ann

[illexsquid]

I like coffee. And I like tea. But I do not like them mixed together.

While not something our eye can see, a shot like this reveals a reality that, nevertheless, exists.

Well said! Indeed, I feel people get too hung up on “what the eye would see” to enjoy all the different ways in the spectrum of energy to view objects. They are all valid yet many will call them “fake”
I especially love the composites where they combine Hubble shots with x-ray or gamma rays which let you see the relationship to what we see in visible light.

Eric

I'm actually with Holger on this one. This is not a matter of enhancing details normally invisible to the eye. It's a matter of adding something that was NOT THERE. One can't track the sky without smudging the land; one can't get the moonlit peaks without both underexposing and washing out the deep sky. The solution? Just cut and paste two unrelated images! Might as well add a bemittened Bernie Sanders while you're at it.

[bystander]

I like coffee. And I like tea. But I do not like them mixed together.

While not something our eye can see, a shot like this reveals a reality that, nevertheless, exists.

I'm actually with Holger on this one. This is not a matter of enhancing details normally invisible to the eye. It's a matter of adding something that was NOT THERE. One can't track the sky without smudging the land; one can't get the moonlit peaks without both underexposing and washing out the deep sky. The solution? Just cut and paste two unrelated images! Might as well add a bemittened Bernie Sanders while you're at it.

From the photographer on facebook:

Hi everyone! I'm the photographer. Firstly, thanks so much for so many kind comments, and to APOD for featuring my image! I wanted to provide a couple photos here to show that this indeed a real alignment, obviously taken using tracking for the sky, and no tracking for the foreground. Here is one single unstacked h-alpha exposure, showing the alignment. Please let me know if you have any questions!

[neufer]

Gassy Jack

---

<<The statue of John Deighton, also known as "Gassy Jack", is installed in Vancouver's Gastown neighborhood, in British Columbia, Canada.It stands at the intersection of Carrall and Water streets. The statue was commissioned in 1970 by a group of Gastown developers. It is located near where Deighton had operated the Globe Saloon.

Deighton (November 1830 – May 23, 1875) was a Canadian bar owner who was born in Hull, England. He traveled to California and then New Caledonia (now British Columbia, Canada) as a gold prospector, before operating bars in New Westminster and later on the south side of Burrard Inlet. The area later became known as Gastown after him.

On June 16, 2020, the statue was splattered with red paint amidst growing calls to remove statues honoring colonialist or racist individuals. Activists cited Deighton's marriage to a 12 year old Squamish girl named Quahail-ya as the reason for its removal. A petition calling for its removal garnered over 1,500 signatures.>>

[De58te]

My two cents. Although I do like to have undoctored pictures most of the time, however we live in a modern time when art can be manipulated to the complete opposite of realism. Consider say a Hollywood movie, Gravity (If I may be allowed to say a copyright title. Actually that word in astronomy is NOT copyrighted.) Well anyway in that movie we see a lot of things that never happened. Just one example space stations are smashed to smithereens by asteroids storms even though in reality that never happened - knock on wood.

Years ago when I was in grade 4 or 5 science class we learned that many of the visible stars formed constellations in the shape of animals. Many of the nights I would look outside and wonder why Ursa Major looked like a grizzly bear. (If anything it looked more like a frying pan.)The school had showed us a poster of the position of the stars and an artist had painted a grizzly bear behind it. Another constellation, Leo, was pictured as a lion. There were also dogs, bulls, rabbits, fish and scorpions in the night sky. If you can't accept the fantasy about fantasy things in astronomy perpetrated by astronomers, then maybe you should skip astronomy and follow mathematics or chemistry. Two subjects that totally reject fantasies.

[johnnydeep]

Ok, I see North America clearly in the lighter nebula (NGC 7000), but where the heck is the pelican in IC 5070? Wikipedia shows this pic for IC 5070, but all I can see is maybe a ghost-like apparation:

North America Pelican 68 Cyg annotated.png

Here you are:

1 = North America Nebula, NGC 7000
2 = The Pelican Nebula
3 = 68 Cygni, one of the sky's rare naked eye O-type stars.

Ann

Thanks. A pretty sorry pelican if you ask me

[geckzilla]

I'm actually with Holger on this one. This is not a matter of enhancing details normally invisible to the eye. It's a matter of adding something that was NOT THERE. One can't track the sky without smudging the land; one can't get the moonlit peaks without both underexposing and washing out the deep sky. The solution? Just cut and paste two unrelated images! Might as well add a bemittened Bernie Sanders while you're at it.

Just a reminder that art existed long before photography, and that just because something cannot be photographed exactly as is does not necessarily make it less real or less valid.

[Cousin Ricky]

Ok, I see North America clearly in the lighter nebula (NGC 7000), but where the heck is the pelican in IC 5070?

This is what I see:

Liron Gertsman’s Pelican Nebula with annotations

[Chris Peterson]

While not something our eye can see, a shot like this reveals a reality that, nevertheless, exists.

Well said! Indeed, I feel people get too hung up on “what the eye would see” to enjoy all the different ways in the spectrum of energy to view objects. They are all valid yet many will call them “fake”
I especially love the composites where they combine Hubble shots with x-ray or gamma rays which let you see the relationship to what we see in visible light.

Eric

I'm actually with Holger on this one. This is not a matter of enhancing details normally invisible to the eye. It's a matter of adding something that was NOT THERE. One can't track the sky without smudging the land; one can't get the moonlit peaks without both underexposing and washing out the deep sky. The solution? Just cut and paste two unrelated images! Might as well add a bemittened Bernie Sanders while you're at it.

You're mistaken. Nothing was added that wasn't there. The only reason that one image was tracked was because it required a longer exposure. A technical limitation, no different than the technical limitation of our eyes in not being sensitive enough to record that scene natively. This exact object was in that exact location at one moment, that might be considered the overall moment represented by the image. An ideal sensor would have recorded just this, in a single fast exposure.

[johnnydeep]

Ok, I see North America clearly in the lighter nebula (NGC 7000), but where the heck is the pelican in IC 5070?

This is what I see:

pelican-gertsman.jpg

I can see it, but perhaps a pterodactyl is more like it:

Pterodactyl?

[illexsquid]

While not something our eye can see, a shot like this reveals a reality that, nevertheless, exists.

I'm actually with Holger on this one. This is not a matter of enhancing details normally invisible to the eye. It's a matter of adding something that was NOT THERE. One can't track the sky without smudging the land; one can't get the moonlit peaks without both underexposing and washing out the deep sky. The solution? Just cut and paste two unrelated images! Might as well add a bemittened Bernie Sanders while you're at it.

144444146_2954315631455324_5366364864944009038_o[1].jpg

From the photographer on facebook:

Hi everyone! I'm the photographer. Firstly, thanks so much for so many kind comments, and to APOD for featuring my image! I wanted to provide a couple photos here to show that this indeed a real alignment, obviously taken using tracking for the sky, and no tracking for the foreground. Here is one single unstacked h-alpha exposure, showing the alignment. Please let me know if you have any questions!

I stand corrected. I am particularly impressed that you were able to get good contrast in the sky, despite the atmospheric extinction and the moon. I know there's quite a bit of technique to getting the stars to track perfectly across the whole image, as well.

[majoroz]

I like coffee. And I like tea. But I do not like them mixed together.

Agreed........

The are making waaaaay too many "composites" lately.

I get weary of their photoshopping..........

[Chris Peterson]

I like coffee. And I like tea. But I do not like them mixed together.

Agreed........

The are making waaaaay too many "composites" lately.

I get weary of their photoshopping..........

You're not going to run into many astroimages that are not "composites". Indeed, your average phone camera constructs its images from processed stacks of separate images shot at different times and different exposures. How is that any different?

[orin stepanek]

Ok, I see North America clearly in the lighter nebula (NGC 7000), but where the heck is the pelican in IC 5070? Wikipedia shows this pic for IC 5070, but all I can see is maybe a ghost-like apparation:

North America Pelican 68 Cyg annotated.png

Here you are:

1 = North America Nebula, NGC 7000
2 = The Pelican Nebula
3 = 68 Cygni, one of the sky's rare naked eye O-type stars.

Ann

Thanks. A pretty sorry pelican if you ask me

At least I can recognize the pelican nebula! Some nebulas more difficult to recognize!

[illexsquid]

I like coffee. And I like tea. But I do not like them mixed together.

Agreed........

The are making waaaaay too many "composites" lately.

I get weary of their photoshopping..........

You're not going to run into many astroimages that are not "composites". Indeed, your average phone camera constructs its images from processed stacks of separate images shot at different times and different exposures. How is that any different?

Chris, you're being pretty disingenuous here. As an experienced astrophotographer, you know the difference between stacking and composition. And while both can be used to create a pretty image, the former is used to bring out underlying details in the real object, and the latter is used to create clickbait-y eye candy. The cut-and-paste compositions bear more relationship to art than to the objective reality,

For the record, this APOD image is not such a composition; the creator put considerable effort and talent into making it represent reality as closely as possible, and documented the process above. However, the problem is that it could be a composition of two unrelated images, and we'd never know. Certainly I've seen daytime land images with night sky views thrown in that are not possible from the same location, so I know that it happens.

If you derive happiness from making those impossible cut-and-pastes, then more power to you. Just don't try to misrepresent them as any kind of reality. I find enough wonder in the universe we actually live in.

[Chris Peterson]

Agreed........

The are making waaaaay too many "composites" lately.

I get weary of their photoshopping..........

You're not going to run into many astroimages that are not "composites". Indeed, your average phone camera constructs its images from processed stacks of separate images shot at different times and different exposures. How is that any different?

Chris, you're being pretty disingenuous here. As an experienced astrophotographer, you know the difference between stacking and composition. And while both can be used to create a pretty image, the former is used to bring out underlying details in the real object, and the latter is used to create clickbait-y eye candy. The cut-and-paste compositions bear more relationship to art than to the objective reality,

For the record, this APOD image is not such a composition; the creator put considerable effort and talent into making it represent reality as closely as possible, and documented the process above. However, the problem is that it could be a composition of two unrelated images, and we'd never know. Certainly I've seen daytime land images with night sky views thrown in that are not possible from the same location, so I know that it happens.

If you derive happiness from making those impossible cut-and-pastes, then more power to you. Just don't try to misrepresent them as any kind of reality. I find enough wonder in the universe we actually live in.

If it is a composition that can in no way be distinguished from reality, does it matter?

[illexsquid]

You're not going to run into many astroimages that are not "composites". Indeed, your average phone camera constructs its images from processed stacks of separate images shot at different times and different exposures. How is that any different?

Chris, you're being pretty disingenuous here. As an experienced astrophotographer, you know the difference between stacking and composition. And while both can be used to create a pretty image, the former is used to bring out underlying details in the real object, and the latter is used to create clickbait-y eye candy. The cut-and-paste compositions bear more relationship to art than to the objective reality,

For the record, this APOD image is not such a composition; the creator put considerable effort and talent into making it represent reality as closely as possible, and documented the process above. However, the problem is that it could be a composition of two unrelated images, and we'd never know. Certainly I've seen daytime land images with night sky views thrown in that are not possible from the same location, so I know that it happens.

If you derive happiness from making those impossible cut-and-pastes, then more power to you. Just don't try to misrepresent them as any kind of reality. I find enough wonder in the universe we actually live in.

If it is a composition that can in no way be distinguished from reality, does it matter?

Well, obviously you have to decide that for yourself. As for me, I find such composites distasteful for several reasons. For one, they cheapen the value of the shots of people who actually put the work in to create something more realistic (like the photographer behind this APOD). Also, "can no way be distinguished from reality" means different things to different people; for the astronomically literate people in this forum, that's a very high standard. These compositions can create an expectation among the less well-informed that can lead to disillusionment when they discover they're not "the truth". (And yes, I know that's a problem with all astrophotography, but explanations like "this is a long exposure" or "this is a particular wavelength filter showing certain elements" are better than "I cut and pasted a beach in Tahiti because it was pretty".)

[Chris Peterson]

Chris, you're being pretty disingenuous here. As an experienced astrophotographer, you know the difference between stacking and composition. And while both can be used to create a pretty image, the former is used to bring out underlying details in the real object, and the latter is used to create clickbait-y eye candy. The cut-and-paste compositions bear more relationship to art than to the objective reality,

For the record, this APOD image is not such a composition; the creator put considerable effort and talent into making it represent reality as closely as possible, and documented the process above. However, the problem is that it could be a composition of two unrelated images, and we'd never know. Certainly I've seen daytime land images with night sky views thrown in that are not possible from the same location, so I know that it happens.

If you derive happiness from making those impossible cut-and-pastes, then more power to you. Just don't try to misrepresent them as any kind of reality. I find enough wonder in the universe we actually live in.

If it is a composition that can in no way be distinguished from reality, does it matter?

Well, obviously you have to decide that for yourself. As for me, I find such composites distasteful for several reasons. For one, they cheapen the value of the shots of people who actually put the work in to create something more realistic (like the photographer behind this APOD). Also, "can no way be distinguished from reality" means different things to different people; for the astronomically literate people in this forum, that's a very high standard. These compositions can create an expectation among the less well-informed that can lead to disillusionment when they discover they're not "the truth". (And yes, I know that's a problem with all astrophotography, but explanations like "this is a long exposure" or "this is a particular wavelength filter showing certain elements" are better than "I cut and pasted a beach in Tahiti because it was pretty".)

I don't see any problem. All of the objects in the image are located correctly with respect to each other at the time the image was made and are at the same scale. It is an accurate image of a real thing.