Clownfish
March 22nd, 2007, 11:28 PM
A lot of beginners have some trouble with angular sizes. It's one thing to tell someone how big an object is, it's another to show them. I am a picture kind of guy so here's a small collage I created from three rolls of film I took a while back. All the objects in this picture are scaled the same - so you can make an accurate comparison of how big some of these things are - when compared to the moon for example. All the objects where taken with the same scope, and same camera, and in some cases the same roll! I simply cut each object out of the scanned slide and pasted them with no change in size. These objects are shown to their true aparent size compared to each other.
Yes - the Andromeda galaxy is really that big - and the Ring Nebula is that small (if you even find it)!
437
(c)2007 Peter Kennett. Click to see larger size - or click HERE for a hi-res version (http://www.meade4m.com/gallery/4M/Raw/G000674.jpg)
The collage includes (left to right - top to bottom):
M42/43 (Orion nebula)
M101 (Galaxy in Ursa Major)
NGC 2024 (Flame Nebula)
Barnard 33 (Horsehead Nebula)
M20 (Trifed Nebula)
M45 (Pleiades Star Cluster)
M33 (Galaxy in Triangulum)
M17 (Omega/Swan Nebula)
M1 (Crab Nebula)
Luna
M57 (Ring Nebula)
M51 (Whirlpool Galaxy)
NGC 7635 (Bubble Nebula)
NGC 6207 (Galaxy in Hercules)
M13 (Globular Cluster in Hercules)
NGC 884 & NGC 869 (Double Cluster)
NGC 6888 (Crescent Nebula)
M27 (Dumbell Nebula)
M8 (Lagoon Nebula)
NGC 7293 (Helix Nebula)
M31 (Andromeda Galaxy)
M32 (Galaxy near Andromeda)
These are all film exposures using Kodak Elite Chrome 200 and Fujichrome 400F Provia in an old Olympus OM-1 SLR camera. The scope was a stock Meade LXD75 8" Schmidt Newtonian. Exposures ran from 20 minutes (M51) to 45 minutes (M31) - except the moon, which was much less of course!
How was it made? I scanned in 3 rolls of 35mm slides that I shot over 3 months. I made certain that I scanned them at the exact same scale. Then I used Adobe Photoshop to create a background of stars from my deep shot of the Crescent nebula (NGC6888). That was a 45 minute exposure, sharply focused in a dense part of the Milky Way, with a tiny subject in the middle, providing me with lots of starry background. Keeping it at the same scale as all the others, I made 6 copies to cover the whole image. I set the black point of all the individual images to the same value, which helped in the blending. Then I simply cut and pasted the objects from other slides onto the background and positioned them as desired. The next step was to cut out a nice post-processed version of the same image and carefully position it exactly over the un-processed version. This ensured the scale of these images remained true. Finally I set the dark points for these objects and blended and feathered them. Voila!
Enjoy!
CF
Yes - the Andromeda galaxy is really that big - and the Ring Nebula is that small (if you even find it)!
437
(c)2007 Peter Kennett. Click to see larger size - or click HERE for a hi-res version (http://www.meade4m.com/gallery/4M/Raw/G000674.jpg)
The collage includes (left to right - top to bottom):
M42/43 (Orion nebula)
M101 (Galaxy in Ursa Major)
NGC 2024 (Flame Nebula)
Barnard 33 (Horsehead Nebula)
M20 (Trifed Nebula)
M45 (Pleiades Star Cluster)
M33 (Galaxy in Triangulum)
M17 (Omega/Swan Nebula)
M1 (Crab Nebula)
Luna
M57 (Ring Nebula)
M51 (Whirlpool Galaxy)
NGC 7635 (Bubble Nebula)
NGC 6207 (Galaxy in Hercules)
M13 (Globular Cluster in Hercules)
NGC 884 & NGC 869 (Double Cluster)
NGC 6888 (Crescent Nebula)
M27 (Dumbell Nebula)
M8 (Lagoon Nebula)
NGC 7293 (Helix Nebula)
M31 (Andromeda Galaxy)
M32 (Galaxy near Andromeda)
These are all film exposures using Kodak Elite Chrome 200 and Fujichrome 400F Provia in an old Olympus OM-1 SLR camera. The scope was a stock Meade LXD75 8" Schmidt Newtonian. Exposures ran from 20 minutes (M51) to 45 minutes (M31) - except the moon, which was much less of course!
How was it made? I scanned in 3 rolls of 35mm slides that I shot over 3 months. I made certain that I scanned them at the exact same scale. Then I used Adobe Photoshop to create a background of stars from my deep shot of the Crescent nebula (NGC6888). That was a 45 minute exposure, sharply focused in a dense part of the Milky Way, with a tiny subject in the middle, providing me with lots of starry background. Keeping it at the same scale as all the others, I made 6 copies to cover the whole image. I set the black point of all the individual images to the same value, which helped in the blending. Then I simply cut and pasted the objects from other slides onto the background and positioned them as desired. The next step was to cut out a nice post-processed version of the same image and carefully position it exactly over the un-processed version. This ensured the scale of these images remained true. Finally I set the dark points for these objects and blended and feathered them. Voila!
Enjoy!
CF