SJAA Ephemeris December 2011 |
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On November 12, 2011, the SJAA General Meeting featured Rogelio Bernal Andreo, astroimager extraordinaire. He has a website at http://blog.deepskycolors.com/ . The 3 main things I learned from Rogelio were these. First, the application PixInsight works very well with astrophotos. The company is based in Spain where Rogelio was born. The application costs about $250 less than half the cost of the full version of Photoshop although I got an old copy on EBay for about $100. Second, the distinction between images that are science and those that are art might be a false dichotomy. Images, whether raw or highly processed, have documentary value. An image of Andromeda made to look like a child’s top is artistic but M31 with enhanced colors and greater contrast in the dust lanes still says something about reality. Third, an image becomes memorable because of composition. Rogelio should know, he has had 18 images selected for the website Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD - http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html).
Upcoming speakers scheduled include:
December 10 - Dr. Bruce Margon, his topic: “Glimpsing the Edge of the Universe: Results from the Hubble Space Telescope”.
January 7 - Dr. Alex Filippenko on “The Birth and Early Evolution of the Universe”.