Wednesday, March 2, 2011

rainbow bright

the first stretch of this long observing run is over. i've had a few hours of sleep, and i'm off to the town of mudgee for a couple days to relax and visit several local wineries! the last time i stopped in mudgee, i had lunch at a resturant called "fish in the bush" (tee hee ;)

clouds are generally bad for using telescopes, obviously, but they often produce interesting terrestrial phenomena. the same night we saw the moon next to venus, we also saw a brilliant morning double rainbow!

at one point, both bows stretched around to make 3/4 of a full circle. it was stunning, but i couldnt fit it all into one photo (wish i had a fish-eye lens!). i took a lot of photos that i'd like to try to mosaic together - any recommendations for software to use to do this?

in the meantime, enjoy!




7 comments:

skywatcher88 said...

!!!!!!!Just Beautiful!!!!!!!!!
I love rainbows and other daytime and nighttime sky phenomena just as much as the **stars**in the night sky!
I Have Canon Photostitch on my laptop but have not used it.I will try it out on a nice rainbow pic I took at my Moms place in Geraldton Ont. Canada last summer.Been meaning to do this and you just reminded me.(Thanks)
Drive safely (Do you drive on the left there?) Enjoy your days off with VINO and the Grapes ;)
7718

skywatcher88 said...

Hi again Amanda
I Tried canons photostitch and did not like the results of merging pics.I discovered I had ArcSoft panorama maker 4 on my laptop also and this is a way better program.
Here is a link of the pic of my MOM`S Rainbow!2 pics merged.
http://flic.kr/p/9nau28
Peace and clear skies!
7718

Simon said...

Hi Amanda - Great photos! I've had good results stitching photos using Hugin (http://hugin.sourceforge.net/). It's free and produces beautiful images. Might catch you at SSO next time I'm on the 2.3m!

Stuart said...

Double rainbow all the way!

I've used Hugin too and it works fairly well. It also runs on Linux, Windows and Mac.

Boris Häußler said...

3 recommodations for software (Canons software IS sh*£$&):
1) Photoshop CS3 (great result, no effort at all. Mac and Windows)
2) autostitch (.org? That seems to use the same algorithm as Photoshop, I think the guy who wrote it was hired by Adobe in the end, which is why the version on the website hasn't been updated for a long time or might not be available anymore (but it's a small file and I can send you an email about it. Windows only!!)

The above 2 programs simply need a bunch of images (oriented roughly the same, so no mixing landscape and portrait) and then, using 2-3 numbers to adjust if things go wrong, do everything automatically, un-distorting the images, matching, blending, color correction,...)

3) Hugin has also been recommended to me and I was planning to use it to improve some images where the automatic routines have (small and minor) problems. As far as I understand it, it needs user interaction and it's actually quite some work, but the results seem to be fantastic then.

Cheers to down under,
Boris

heroineworshipper said...

You look a lot skinnier than years ago. Never had much luck with pano stitching. Libpano, which every pano sticher ever written is based on, can't cope with our odd cameras.

skywatcher88 said...

Hi Other posters in here
Thanks for the Hugin tip !
Gonna download and try It Out !
Peace and Clear Skies!
7718