Starship Asterisk*

The Milky Way Over Bryce Canyon

Explanation: What are those strange rock structures? They are towers and walls of sedimentary rock that are particularly plentiful in Bryce Canyon in Utah, USA. The rock columns may rise higher than 50 meters and are called hoodoos. On the far left is Thor's Hammer, perhaps the most famous hoodoo. The tall rock columns were carved, most typically, when a unusually dense cap of rock provided a layer of protection to rock underneath from rain-based erosion. In the above panoramic picture taken earlier this month and compressed horizontally, the foreground rocks were momentarily illuminated by a roving spotlight. Visible in the background are a few water clouds a few kilometers away hovering over the nearby Earth. Visible well beyond that are thousands of individually discernible stars averaging a few hundred light years away in the nearby Milky Way Galaxy. Far in the distance lie billions of stars that are thousands of light years away and compose the faintly glowing arch that is the visible central band of the flat disk of our Milky Way. Over many years, wind and rain will eventually cause the tops of the hoodoos to topple, whereafter the underlying column will likely completely erode away.

<< Previous APOD

Discuss Any APOD

Next APOD >>

[/b]

I am a digital/photographer and artist. I question the veracity of this picture. I have been to Bryce Canyon. I have done digital time exposures at night. The only way you can get the stars is to have a moving tripod timed to the rotation of the earth. However, If the camera moves to follow the stars, the objects on earth, the foreground (Bryce Canyon) will be blurred, if even in silhouette. Part of that blurred silhouette will be illuminated in focus by a flash of light as suggested in the text, but the outline will not. This photograph is not possible without doctoring, and having been to Bryce Canyon, walked in it over a period of days (the images in my memory I will never forget) and taken numerous photos myself, my first thought is it was just painted in, although very cleverly and convincing to one who has not had my experience.
George V. Edwards

snip:

I question the veracity of this picture.

The photographer probably learned his techniques from, or perhaps is unconciously imitating, Mr. Wally Pacholka. There has been a lot of debate about the veracity, or 'realness' of Mr. Pacholka's night sky images, and the over-processing he subjects his images to.

Mr. Cooper's (owner of today's APoD) images seem like they are done very similarly.

Today's APOD looks surreal; & kind of eerie!

"... in the nearby Milky Way Galaxy" indeed. And how close to Earth would that galaxy be?

At first glance, especially in the horizontally compressed version of the shot, it appears that the hoodoos are CGI superimposed on the Milky Way panoramic.

In the actual panoramic, the hoodoos look less like computer-generated, and more real, but digitally superimposed over the milky way shot.

Just sayin'.

I have to agree that the horizontal compression is sort of strange; the larger version linked behind today's picture hasn't been compressed and the rocks look like rocky towers instead of curtains. I would love to get the chance to visit here and see this for myself.

Was today's APOD written by another person than usual? The style of writing seems so different. Out of curiosity, how many people do the honors of keeping APOD publishing every day? It seems like it could be a formidable challenge after awhile. I really admire all the efforts behind the scenes!

The analogy of the central body of the Milky Way that the author has changed in the form of mountains intertwined with mounds worn also by the remains of other worn mountains leads to presume that those like they are part of the same family.

Powder is the rest of ruined bodies, so it is the end and not the beginning.

Oops

Sorry John, but I thought my earlier post made a point of the fact that Earth is actually part -- albeit a minuscule part -- of the Milky Way Galaxy (so "nearby" is misleading).

I suppose, unless one spells out one's point in specific detail, it is likely to be misunderstood.

Irony, like satire, escapes the vast majority of Americans.

The hoodoos look extremely fake to me, especially on the right. The photo is too doctored-up, and is beneath the usual stellar APOD standards (pardon the pun).

georgeedwards wrote:I am a digital/photographer and artist. I question the veracity of this picture. I have been to Bryce Canyon. I have done digital time exposures at night. The only way you can get the stars is to have a moving tripod timed to the rotation of the earth. However, If the camera moves to follow the stars, the objects on earth, the foreground (Bryce Canyon) will be blurred, if even in silhouette. Part of that blurred silhouette will be illuminated in focus by a flash of light as suggested in the text, but the outline will not. This photograph is not possible without doctoring, and having been to Bryce Canyon, walked in it over a period of days (the images in my memory I will never forget) and taken numerous photos myself, my first thought is it was just painted in, although very cleverly and convincing to one who has not had my experience.
George V. Edwards

Tracking is only necessary at longer focal lengths. A current crop of full frame DSLRs allows to capture a detailed image of the Milky Way on a fixed tripod with exposures as short as 15 or 30 seconds. There are numerous examples on the net and some made it to APOD. In my opinion this is an honest image albeit with a foreground artificially lit. EXIF data for this image shows 66 seconds long exposures with a 20mm lens and the star rotation further away from the northern celestial pole at right side of the image looks quite correct.

Alex

I'm Ben Cooper, the photographer of this image.

Rest assured nothing has been done to the image other than stiching the eight original images together. You can easily, under a dark sky, capture the milky way and stars with an exposure of ISO 3200 and 30 seconds wide open (3.5 in this case). The foreground was lit using a big spotlight - known as light painting in photography - by panning the light around quickly over the rocks and hoodoos in each shot.

I am not sure why the exif says 66 seconds, unless I botched one it was 30-40 each.

You can view more painting-with-light night sky images from my Bryce outing here as well:

http://www.launchphotography.com/Milky_ ... anyon.html

If you have any more questions I would be happy to answer. -Ben

this is an honest image albeit with a foreground artificially lit.

I meant lit at the scene (light-painted) not in post-processing.

Hi, Ben! Welcome to the forum and congrats on the APOD!

~~~
Today's image appeared on the Observation Deck here: http://asterisk.apod.com/vie ... 29&t=20316

And another of Ben's images appears later on that thread here: http://asterisk.apod.com/vie ... 16#p127909

I'm glad others have pointed out how "fake" today's image looks, not the star background, but all the foreground elements. The Bryce Canyon features might have started out as an actual image, but if so, have been so over processed as to appear to be cut directly out of a video game.

Ray wrote:I'm glad others have pointed out how "fake" today's image looks, not the star background, but all the foreground elements. The Bryce Canyon features might have started out as an actual image, but if so, have been so over processed as to appear to be cut directly out of a video game.

I guess some people aren't going to be convinced, unfortunately. But no post processing was done to the images beyond stitching and resizing.

It's a shame in this digital age that some people declare everything as fake and ruin it for others.

BPCooper wrote:I guess some people aren't going to be convinced, unfortunately. But no post processing was done to the images beyond stitching and resizing.

It's a shame in this digital age that some people declare everything as fake and ruin it for others.

Unfortunately, you'll get that a lot here. People seem to think they know more than the artist.

Welcome aboard the Starship Asterisk* and congratulations on your APOD. Looking forward to more of your work,

How is it the Milky Way is bent in this picture? Can the Milky Way really look like that down there?

Tina wrote:How is it the Milky Way is bent in this picture? Can the Milky Way really look like that down there?

The sky is spherical, but your monitor is flat. The larger area of sky you try mapping to a flat image, the more distortion there will be. And this is a very wide angle shot. You see the Milky Way from its northern to southern extent, arching overhead. You would never see this scene with your eyes with the perspective of this image.

It would be great if images like these could be stitched into a panorama similar to those found in Google Earth Street View. Click into the image and pan around up and down

BPCooper wrote:You can view more painting-with-light night sky images from my Bryce outing here as well:

http://www.launchphotography.com/Milky_ ... anyon.html

If you have any more questions I would be happy to answer. -Ben

I looked at your link Ben and I hope more of your work shows up on future APODs

I have read the response to my earlier questioning the veracity of this picture. The technical explanation about short time exposures may be plausible, but the detail in the hoodoos, especially the softly curving slopes on the right, look cut-out, as does the rest of the outlines. My own experience and photography of Bryce revealed highly textured and detailed irregularities on the edges of the rock forms, such smooth edges are inconsistent with naturally occurring erosion. Also the lighting of the forms looked airbrushed, not an overall capture of the irregularities of detail, the Bryce forms have many surface irregularities that cause differences in tone and small shadows, some are just barely visible in this photo, the real rocks are not that smooth or clean edged. If this is a real photograph, it is so poorly contrived by the "roving spotlight" as to look fake.