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The Pleiades, Jonathan Piques
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The Pleiades

Link: https://www.instagram.com/p/CXJkWF5lzU9/?utm_medium=copy_link
The Pleiades, Jonathan Piques
Powered byPixInsight

The Pleiades

Link: https://www.instagram.com/p/CXJkWF5lzU9/?utm_medium=copy_link

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Acquisition details

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Description

This is the very first object that ever got me interested in astrophotography.  When I was a kid, my grandparents had this old Victorian house in a Boston suburb.  One of the rooms was filled with books, with entire shelves devoted to encyclopedias.  In an effort to escape the cheek-pinching, "my-haven't-you-grown" of the large family gatherings, I used to retreat to this room whenever I could and read about things that interested me.  I will never forget that under one of the space topics was a huge picture of the Pleiades, labeled as the Seven Sisters, and I used to think it was absolutely beautiful and would go back to that entry again and again whenever I visited.  I can still picture it in my head: huge, bright blue stars (with what I now know were large halos and diffraction spikes) surrounded by dust. It looked completely unreal to me, and I'll never forget that feeling of sitting up in the rocking chair in that room, books in my lap, looking at that picture and wondering how in the world it was taken.  Who would've guessed that 30 years later I'd be trying to create the same image? UPDATE: see the revision B for a continuation of this story—my cousin found the book!

So it was with that mental image in my head that I tried to process this.  I wanted big blue stars, and I wanted dust, but more than anything I wanted something that would evoke an echo of that feeling.  Fortunately, this object is bright as can be and most of my job was taming the brightness and the vibrant colors (I even desaturated it a bit), and using a few tools like light DBE and HDRMT to try and highlight the dust.   Generally though, I used a really light touch with everything to keep as natural as possible.   I hope I did my memory a little bit of justice.

Comments

Revisions

  • Final
    The Pleiades, Jonathan Piques
    Original
    The Pleiades, Jonathan Piques
    B

B

Title: FOUND!! Inspiration page

Description: My cousin saw me post this to Facebook and she actually HAS the encyclopedias from my grandparents’ old house! It was the 1969 Encyclopedia Brittanica. She found the page I was referring to and sent it. Absolutely made my day. I have been wondering for years what became of those books. Such a cool thing she still has them.

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The Pleiades, Jonathan Piques
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