So… instead of acknowledging my pile of homework and studying this weekend, guess what I did instead! I bought myself a nice Subway sandwich. And spent an entire day processing my images for the Statue of Liberty nebula (NGC 3576). NGC 3576 is most popular for its resemblance to the Statue of Liberty, which is uncanny at minimum.
The second I saw this nebula on Stellarium, I had to look up what other people had put together from imaging it – and wow, was I ever amazed. I was so surprised that I had never heard of it before. So, last week I set out to take some images in the hopes of a super cool picture. Tragically, the powers that be had other plans, and decided to shake up a little wind over Chile. This unfortunately didn’t bode well with my choice of 120 second exposure time, so I rolled with it and decided to take an extra set of photos the following night.
The next night, winds were light and things were all set to go. Except, I soon after learned that our telescope can only reach a certain limit on the rotator and must be reset, otherwise you get some cool star trails.
Left/Top: Windy conditions. This shakes up the entire image, just like if you were taking a picture but accidentally moved the camera with your hand. Right/Bottom: Star trails! (Edited for clarity.) This makes stars further from the focal point turn into curved streaks, as the telescope sometimes fails to rotate to align with the movement of the night sky.
Eventually, I got all of the pictures needed (about 106 out of about 200 survived) and got to work with post-processing. This was my first time doing this alone, and so I got to try out a bunch of different things to see what really worked. I ended up with a total of 4 different versions by the end of things, as I kept catching something new I wanted to touch up and fix. This admittedly took up an entire Sunday on the last weekend before finals, but hey, self-care is important right?
As a newbie to all of this, one of my dilemmas in processing these photos is the question of: does it look natural enough? Don’t make fun of me, but I’ve recently learned that almost all astrophotography is processed to the liking of whoever took it. There is no “right picture,” only what you like and what captures what you want to show with your image. So I had a good time experimenting with that.
My first version of the image. While I do appreciate the warmness of the photo, I later decided to try aiming for something with a higher contrast and finer structural detail.
After collaborating with Sharon (who was a *huge* help — she really is an astrophotography legend) I was able to manipulate the brightness of the stars without affecting the actual image of the nebula itself. This was nice as I do love stars, but they were definitely taking away from the photo itself. Eventually, I ended up with this gorgeous photo which I’ve been obsessing over for hours.
As above, so below: the image reflects two polar opposites of glory and anguish attached as one body, mirroring eachother.
Although the nebula is named after the Statue of Liberty, to me it looks like some sort of righteous figure swiping up the gas beneath him in a victorious gesture. Meanwhile, when you flip the image upside down, you’ll notice that beneath him is what looks like a ghastly form holding its head out in agony. I think that this concept is so damn cool – it’s really my favourite thing about this picture. I hope you like it too!
P.S. When processing your photos, make sure to turn off the blue light suppression features on your laptop or you will be very confused as to why the colours look so different on your mobile device. Didn’t figure that out until halfway through this post!
Time to start some homework…
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damn andrea, i did not look at this neb this way until this post. very artsy, very philosophical… time to go study, bye.