http://pixinsight.com/examples/NGC6914-CAHA/en.html
This article traces how a astronomical picture is developed to overcome the effect of saturation of pixels from stars, dust grains, and other problems. It is cool that they laid this out, as I have not read about the process before.
The first problem that arises with imaging the NGC 6914 nebular complex is that the bright stars quickly saturate the pixels in the ccd. This is called blooming. Their method for reducing this is simple and seems to make intuitive sense. It seems like they have to make additional changes afterward, called "cloning." I wonder what this is.
The issues that arise with this images sounds very similar to problems with electronics, thus, the huge importance of understanding electronics well. I noticed that signal to noise ratio is mentioned often.
I also wonder what astronomers are actually representing when they create images like this. Are they trying to represent what they human eye would actually see? Are they trying to make the coolest looking picture possible? Are they trying to mix making the picture realistic and making the image look cool? I think they pictures are pretty effected.
I can see the importance of understanding waves and quantum mechanics in developing these pictures. I am not sure what the pixel layers are in the section about dust grains. Is it 4 pixels deep, or 4 pixels wide? For the superflat correction, I did not notice much of a difference.
I could see having a strong math background helping in this process, as it involves mapping difference images onto other images. I am looking into analysis or p-chem. Ah, their are normalization factors...they don't go away... The DBE correction seems to have more of a definite effect. Wow, the HDR wavelet transformation does quite a bit.
This also has some star generator databases that you can download. I will definitely check this out. Anyway, this is the end of this post. I should try and make this more informative and less of running commentary. At least, I should try and quite what I comment on.
Ideas for format of blog posts (for which having a format is optional also)
1. Title
2. Link
3. Summary
4. Reaction/Things I specifically want to remember
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