Nature Photography

One of my first images as a novice astrophotographer last year was the Rosette Nebula. Rosette is so named because it looks somewhat like a rose. My original attempt was decent for a beginner, but this target is extensive, and quite beautiful, packed with intriguing details. I reprocessed that image once, however the data was poor, my processing skills were minimal, and there was only so much I could do with it. I tried a couple of times early winter to image Rosette again, however it is not the brightest object, and again my skills weren’t quite up to the task.

At the end of the year last year, I made a couple of major breakthroughs in my astrophotography, both in terms of imaging and in terms of processing. With those newfound skills, I decided to give Rosette another try this past January. This is the result, processed to two different color palettes. While not as deep as some of my exposures right around the end of 2014/beginning of 2015, as it was imaged from my back yard rather than my dark site, I am still quite happy with the smooth contrast and soft color tone. The structure and shape of the Rosette came out beautifully in this image, as did many of the details within the core, including very intriguing dark dust structures. I decided to produce some close-up crops of various regions of these two images, for those who want to see a little deeper:

Rosette – “Natural Color” – Detail Crops

Rosette – “Narrow Band Color” – Detail Crops