A tale of two horses catching a glimpse of the breathtaking sunrise from two awe-inspiring locations, one from above the fog on the crater of an active volcano, Mount Bromo, while the other is located in our very own galaxy, the Milky Way! Spend a few minutes to try to locate the elusive horse before you check out the annotated image below.
Needless to say I have created the composite image using 2 real images in order to tell the story and you can see below the images I’ve used to create the final image.
Unprocessed image of a horseman catching the sunrise on the crater of Mount Bromo
Unprocessed image of the Milky Way after moonset in Mount Bromo
So did you manage to find the second horse yet? You would if you’re an experienced astrophotographer or a stargazer. The second horse is actually the Dark Horse Nebula that’s located in the Milky Way galaxy and it’s annotated with a big circle below. Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex, a dark nebula of gas and dust, is also visible in the image and it’s annotated with a smaller circle below. There are plenty of other nebulae that are also visible but let’s talk about them another time.
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Before After
When I try to unveil the finest details in all my astrophotos, digital noise becomes more pronounced. Applying a global noise reduction action on the image won’t work as it will kill the details that I am going to show. So I usually create complex custom masks for each image I am working on and apply my custom Photoshop actions to enhance the details while at the same time, suppressing all digital noise. The slider below shows a cropped (100%) view of an image that I’ve processed previously here. Play with the slider and see how the image would look like if it’s noisy.
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Before After
I have just opened up my 5th astrophotography tour to Mount Bromo this year commencing in August 2014 and if you’re interested, please click here for more details.
