A bright sporadic meteor streaked across the magnificent night sky in Mount Bromo just one day before the peak of Eta Aquarid meteor shower which is caused by Halley’s Comet. They are named after their apparent radiant point in the Constellation Aquarius, near one of its brightest stars, Eta Aquarii. Mount Bromo, which was spewing smoke in the above image, is one of the active volcanoes in East Java, Indonesia. The highest active volcano is called Mount Semeru and the extinct volcano, Mount Batok, is located at the right side of Mount Bromo. The above image was taken when I was leading an astrophotography tour to Mount Bromo in May 2013 and I reprocessed this composite image recently to bring out the colors and details of the Milky Way. The image may appear grainy to some of you but it’s really the faint stars that we’re seeing but most people would easily mistaken the faint stars as digital noise. See below for a 100% crop view of the above image which shows the faint stars.
Play with the slider to see how the image would look like if it’s noisy.
-
Before After
The good news is we’re also able to remove the faint stars from the image so it looks less grainy albeit I still prefer to show the finest details in all my astrophotos 🙂
-
Eta Aquarid Meteor over Mount Bromo
One of the challenges in astrophotography lies in the ability to unveil the finest details of the night sky and yet, doing so without introducing more digital noise in your image. You’ll never know the limit of your photography skills until you venture into night sky photography. It’s tough but definitely rewarding !
If you are keen to join my astrophotography workshop, please click here for more details.
