The second day at the 2010 Advanced Imaging Conference (AIC) in San Jose, California, began with a bang — actually, two of them. AIC President Ken Crawford said a few words to start this morning’s session, in which all attendees are in the same room.
On behalf of the AIC Board of Directors, Crawford presented long-time imager Russ Croman the 2010 Hubble Award, the group’s highest honor. Croman thanked the AIC and then gave a spirited talk in which he demonstrated many of his techniques.
He chose spiral galaxy M66 as his example, and the final image he showed was spectacular. Both the intricate detail in the galaxy’s core and the ephemeral spiral arms appeared clearly, and the color rendition was remarkable. As Astronomy’s photo editor, I judge astroimagers’ final results. It’s eye-opening to see the painstaking process they go through to maximize the data they collect with their cameras.
Next up was an imager I only became aware of last year, Rogelio Bernal Andreo. His specialty is wide-field astrophotography. But, like Croman, acquiring the data is just the start.
Andreo is an engaging speaker, but the sheer number of techniques he uses to process his final images blew me away. From seamlessly stitching many images together to removing the nonuniform background glow (in each color) to reducing the effect of the myriad faint stars that would otherwise overwhelm such wide-field images, he demonstrated one technique after another that slowly transformed his initial shots into one spectacular image.
Indeed, day two of the AIC is off to a great start!
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Sponsor updates at AIC
Putting faces to images at AIC
The best imagers are in California
On my way to the AIC 2010