Create your own Color Hubble Images
Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2012 11:41 pm
This looks cool. Maybe some of our more artistically inclined members could take a shot at this.
Until recently, making presentable images from Hubble data has been fairly cumbersome, requiring some experience with specialized software such as IRAF or IDL, used to analyze astronomy data. Now the process has been significantly streamlined with the introduction of the Photoshop FITS Liberator. If you have a basic understanding of astronomical data, digital photography and a working knowledge of Adobe Photoshop you can transform astronomical data in the FITS format into pretty pictures, in black and white or in color. The resulting images may be used as any digital photo: reproduced in print, displayed on a web page, emailed, etc.
FITS, the Flexible Image Transport System is a file format used for many years in astronomy to store and move images from telescope-based instruments. It has been designed to provide capabilities needed by astronomers but is not a generally known format such as JPEG or TIFF.
Adobe Photoshop is the industry-standard “digital darkroom” software for working with photos. It includes many tools to work with images to improve tonal range, color, contrast, in addition to combining multiple exposures, adding annotation, and a whole suite of more artistic capabilities. But Photoshop has not recognized FITS data, until now.
Somebody else needs to take a crack at this.