Oro -
With all of the postprocessing done in digital astrophotography, you could spend a lifetime tweaking a single image until it's "just right", and you'll probably never quite get there. There will always be something that you know that just isn't quite right - and "fixing" that one thing is likely to "break" others. You of course know this.
The point I'm trying to make is this - your astrophotos are quite beautiful, and certainly show your skill and attention to detail, and from my perspective post as many as you like. Astro imaging is in many ways a very subjective art - deep-sky images will never look the same as they do through the eyepiece due to sensitivity differences in the human eye vs. CCD across the visible spectrum. For me, when it comes to appreciating astro images done for non-scientific purposes, the only criteria I apply is this: Is it beautiful? Even visual artifacts such as diffraction spikes, while technically not "real", are quite beautiful when in-balance with the rest of the image.
By that criteria, you work is an epic win.
Can I ask what instruments you were using? I'm guessing a fast newtonian with a coma corrector. Amirite?
With all of the postprocessing done in digital astrophotography, you could spend a lifetime tweaking a single image until it's "just right", and you'll probably never quite get there. There will always be something that you know that just isn't quite right - and "fixing" that one thing is likely to "break" others. You of course know this.
The point I'm trying to make is this - your astrophotos are quite beautiful, and certainly show your skill and attention to detail, and from my perspective post as many as you like. Astro imaging is in many ways a very subjective art - deep-sky images will never look the same as they do through the eyepiece due to sensitivity differences in the human eye vs. CCD across the visible spectrum. For me, when it comes to appreciating astro images done for non-scientific purposes, the only criteria I apply is this: Is it beautiful? Even visual artifacts such as diffraction spikes, while technically not "real", are quite beautiful when in-balance with the rest of the image.
By that criteria, you work is an epic win.
Can I ask what instruments you were using? I'm guessing a fast newtonian with a coma corrector. Amirite?
