Astro Anarchy

Thursday, June 25, 2015

An experimental 3D-study of the NGC 2174, the Monkey Head Nebula

This is an experimental test with a 3D-conversion of my astronomical image. Only real elements from the original image are used, there is nothing added but the volumetric information!

NOTE. This is a personal vision about shapes and volumes, based on some scientific data and an artistic impression.

The original 2D-image of NGC 2175

A blog post about this photo, with technical details, can be seen HERE

Video1 of NGC 2175

This is a looped video, click to start and stop. Original movie is in HD720p resolution.

Video2 of NGC 2175

This is a looped video, click to start and stop. Original movie is in HD720p resolution.

An animated GIF

Info about the technique used

Due to huge distances, real parallax can't be imaged in most of the astronomical objects.

I have developed an experimental technique to convert my astropics to a artificial volumetric models.

My 3-D experiments are a mixture of science and an artistic impression. I collect distance and other information before I do my 3-D conversion. Usually there are known stars, coursing the ionization, so I can place them at right relative distance. If I know a distance to the nebula, I can fine tune distances of the stars so, that right amount of stars are front and behind of the object.

I use a “rule of thumb” method for stars: brighter is closer, but if a real distance is known, I'm using that. Many 3-D shapes can be figured out just by looking carefully the structures in nebula, such as dark nebulae must be at front of the emission nebulae in order to show up etc...

The general structure of many star forming regions is very same, there is a group of young stars, as an open cluster inside of the nebula. The stellar wind from the stars is then blowing the gas away around the cluster and forming a kind of cavitation – or a hole — around it. The pillar-like formations in the nebula must point to a source of stellar wind, for the same reason.

How accurate the final model is, depends how much I have known and guessed right. The motivation to make those 3-D-studies is just to show, that objects in the images are not like paintings on the canvas but really three dimensional objects floating in the three dimensional space. This generally adds a new dimension to my hobby as an astronomical imager.

A screenshot of the 3D-model

A 3D-mesh was used as a body for the animated image, there are no textures yet applied in the model.

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Just for fun, a rocket launch seen from my hometown Oulu, Finland

I made this image manipulation to show the actual scale of the Saturn rocket in everyday environment.

Image shows my hometown from the marketplace and there is a map attached showing the locations.

The Height of the Apollo rocket is around 110m. The church, seen at left in the image, is about 54m high.

A Saturn V launch from Oulu
Click for a large photo

I think, the city is pretty much gone after the launch...

The Map

PS.

Other well known landmarks seen in Oulu at scale

Cheops Pyramid
Click for a large photo

The Empire State Building
Click for a large photo

Monday, April 27, 2015

A video out of my astronomical photos

I made a video clip out of my astronomical nature photographs, the movie is in full HD-format.

Please, click start and use a gear symbol at the bottom right of the video window menu, select 1080p HD quality. Then select the full screen mode by using the rightmost symbol.

BELLA NOTTE
A 14 minute movie by J-P Metsavainio

Click to start and stop the movie

Some links to my work as an astrophotographer

Portfolio: http://astroanarchy.zenfolio.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jp.metsavainio

Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/astroanarchy/

Astrobin: http://www.astrobin.com/users/Metsavainio/

Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCivFr6kAAYZqMVE2doG9uDQ/videos

Saturday, April 18, 2015

B&W space, Winter 2014-15

As astronomical cameras are usually cooled grayscale CCD-cameras, color images are made by shooting each color channel through a filter. For broad band RGB images usually four filters are used Luminance and RGB-filters. Due to massive light pollution in my location, I'm specialized to a narrowband imaging, it's very effective method to shoot emission nebulae, since they are emitting light in well known wavelengths. All other light can be then filtered out and let just the right wavelength pass through. I'm using the most common combination of emission lines, a light from ionized hydrogen (H-alpha), sulfur (S-II) and oxygen (O-III).

The strongest emission line is usually the H-alpha, it has most of the details also. I'm publishing here a collection of H-alpha images from the Winter season 2014-15. Sometimes B&W images can be very beautiful.

A collection of selected B&W H-alpha nebulae, Winter 2014-15

click for a large image

Pelican Nebula