Astronomy Picture of the Day -- A Wide Field Image of the Galactic Center

NASA ^ | January 06, 2012 | (see photo credit)

[SunkenCiv]

Explanation: From Sagittarius to Scorpius, the central Milky Way is a truly beautiful part of planet Earth's night sky. The gorgeous region is captured in this wide field image spanning about 30 degrees. The impressive cosmic vista, taken in 2010, shows off intricate dust lanes, bright nebulae, and star clusters scattered through our galaxy's rich central starfields. Starting on the left, look for the Lagoon and Trifid nebulae, the Cat's Paw, while on the right lies the Pipe dark nebula, and the colorful clouds of Rho Ophiuchi and Antares (right). The actual center of our Galaxy lies about 26,000 light years away and can be found here.

[SunkenCiv]

[Credit & Copyright: Ivan Eder]

[SunkenCiv]

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[JoeProBono]

[varmintman]

I don’t see anything which looks like a black hole....

[cripplecreek]

I've been working on my galactic core. Its funny how tough it is to create the most basic star field. Basically because computers don't do random very well.

[brytlea]

And I think if you were in the middle of that it wouldnt look like anything, would it?

[Future Snake Eater]

A basic starfield isn’t hard. A fractal cloud with adjusted scale, brightness, and contrast gives good results. When you start getting into nebulae and brighter stars...THAT gets tough.

What software did you use for your image?

[cripplecreek]

I’m using photoshop CS3.

[Chode]

question, with everything seeming to move away from everything else, to they know the direction of the center of the universe???

[cripplecreek]

My nebulae are coming along. practice practice practice.

[DJ MacWoW]

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[Future Snake Eater]

Very nice work! The edges of the blue nebula could use some softening, but it's looking great!

OK, it's my turn. A little piece I did in Blender:

Inspired by this scene from the movie "Sunshine." My sun still has a long way to go to look that awesome, though.

[cripplecreek]

I use a lot of tutorials and make them my own as I go along.

http://acrisdesign.com/2009/10/27-excellent-planet-and-space-photoshop-tutorials/

http://www.solarvoyager.com/tutorials.asp

[cripplecreek]

BTW. I liked the movie “Sunshine” for some reason.

[TigersEye]

bttt

[SunkenCiv]

Nice works!