What the Naked Eye Sees in the Night Sky Compared to What the Camera Can Capture

PETAPIXEL ^ | 04/04/15 | Michael Zhang

[SWAMPSNIPER]

The Internet is teeming with photographs and videos of the starry night sky that dazzle the eyes and tickle the imagination, but have you ever wondered how the imagery compares to what photographer’s naked eye actually saw while the camera was taking a picture?

[KoRn]

/mark

[EternalVigilance]

Makes perfect sense.

[Telepathic Intruder]

Of course the eye can’t do a time exposure, and only about 5% of its photoreceptors can detect color. But despite that the human eye is still more sensitive than a camera’s.

[cripplecreek]

The camera has the advantage of being able to record light for as long as the shutter is open.

[Telepathic Intruder]

The eyes work more like videos than stills, of course, in which case they’re much more sensitive to seeing stars at night.

[Calvin Locke]

that the human eye is still more sensitive than a camera’s.

Well, from an older petapixel article, the human eye has a minimum f-number of f/3.2 (with a caveat or two, such as camera has gas, eye has liquid...)

IIRC, to avoid "night blindness", an eye has to keep moving to reawaken/stimulate or keep from minimizing the number of active photoreceptors.

An eye just can't compete with a camera for deep sky seeing.

[Textide]

I bought a decent telescope recently to scratch an astronomy itch. It was surprising to learn that although the Orion nebula is easily spotted, it lacks the brilliance of photos on the web. It’s a white/greenish monochrome to the naked eye.

One interesting thing I read was to take several deep breaths prior to viewing. The extra oxygen improves your night sight. It didn’t make colors appear for me in viewing the Orion nebula, but the more faded, wispy parts became visible.

[Sherman Logan]

FWIW, I think a lot of astronomic photos are artificially colored.

[johncatl]

I miss your photos of the local birds. Finally broke down this year and bought a real SLR digital camera and a couple of zoom lenses.

I'm amazed at the ability of the camera (Nikon D5100) to adjust for varying conditions.

Thinking about getting a remote shutter release to get some photos of the birds at the feeder off the deck.

[KarlInOhio]

I wish astrophotographers were as good at documenting what they are taking a picture of as they are with exposure information. In this case it looks like Sagittarius is in the bottom center.

[Textide]

I think you’re right. Most are long term exposures taken with nice CCD cameras too.

[Squawk 8888]

The false-colour photos are made to emphasize certain aspects of the image to highlight details that are difficult to discern, and/or to show details from non-visible wavelengths (IR, UV, etc). Unretouched colour images are still quite spectacular in many cases.

[Squawk 8888]

Here's an example of false-colour shot with Kodak Ektachrome infrared film. It shows infrared as red, red as green, and green as blue. The pink foliage is a combination of the infrared and green light it reflects (red & blue combine as pink).

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks KoRn, extra to APoD.

[doorgunner69]

I too picked up a used Meade at a thrift shop to scratch the same itch. Was missing all of it's accessories but fixed that with ebay. Now I am finding out how hard it is to find stuff in the sky. Wanted mostly to see Andromeda galaxy first. Too late now, dipping west. My cloudless clear nights are mostly I the cool winter months.

I have a lot of practice to do finding deep sky objects and nebulae. It sure is a lot more than pointing the thing up there and sitting back.

[null and void]

Night vision eye drops

Want!

[Doomonyou]

Cool stuff!

[Textide]

I know what you mean about the difficulty in finding stuff. My current scope is computerized for just that reason.

http://www.celestron.com/browse-shop/astronomy/telescopes/nexstar-6se-computerized-telescope

The only time limiting factor out there now is the mosquitos...