Having a quick read through the comments I just want to say thank you for the kind words! Please follow my IG (https://www.instagram.com/deepskyjourney) to see more of my photography, and the reddit article if you want to drop a comment with any questions :)
https://www.reddit.com/r/ProjectHailMary/s/NbRv3sj3fs
Cheers,
Rod Prazeres
FWIW, my friend, who is an avid astrophotographer, runs a site Brahmand [1] that captures breathtaking pics of the dark sky, with notes on how he took the pics.
Awesome stuff: https://www.brahmand.me/photo-gallery/
Recommended for anyone interested in astrophotography.
*Brahmand in Sanskrit means the universe
> And I have to say this clearly: my wife has been incredible through all of it. She’s put up with my astrophotography craziness, backed me the whole way, and seeing how proud and excited she is has been its own kind of reward.
Maybe because HN is usually geared towards "programmers" rather than "artists", but asking for a (free?) download of full-res versions of a photographers photos is a bit like asking a developer who is publishing commercial desktop software for the source code of the program :)
Maybe at least ask to be able to pay for a high resolution version (not just printed), I know I'd be interested in that too!
It's a 6 minute uber from Toowong station which is a 9 minute train ride from Central station.
You have to book, but it's definitely worth it!
Congrats on this, not only you got credits on a feature movie, you got one of the good ones. Cloud 9 for you, enjoy!
Jazz hands
My website is also www.rpastro.com.au :)
I could feel your excitement in the way you wrote this. And like you said, in a time dominated by CGI and AI, it’s refreshing to see people who still want to create things as real as possible. These experiences and the thinking behind them make the outcome far more meaningful.
Congratulations and best luck!
Ive recently bought a remote rural property in a dark sky area with a view to take up astral photography. Ive previously been quite into landscape photography.
Can you recommend any favourite communities or information sources for a newbie to check out?
I know nothing about astrophotography, but while reading your article I wondered: what happens when a truck passes your house while you're taking these shots, don't the vibrations mess up with the results?
It’s really interesting to read how you’ve captured and created these images… will follow your work!
Very nice shots. It must be a great feeling to see one's own footage in a feature film!
How long do you do astrophotography?
Your work is stellar and I love the shapes and patterns in your photographs.
On a personal note, I find it very refreshing to hear that a major studio opted for real captured photography. Love that they specifically wanted the authenticity of real narrowband data and that speaks to the production team's vision. Enjoy the premiere night, feel incredibly proud. I was already planning on watching the movie this weekend (it releases here on the 26th) and now I'm doubly excited because I know this neat little tidbit.
I'm pretty sure this "Dad did something crazy" moment is going to be a core memory for your kids. Congrats!
As an example terrestrial telescope mirrors get dusty. You're not going to break down the scope just to clean up the dust as this is a many days operation in most cases. So instead you would take "flats" that were of a pure white background and thus showed the dust in its full, dusty, glory. When you take your actual images, you negate (subtract from the original image) the flat and thus any noise generated by the dust. You can use this same method for removing brighter stars from an image that would otherwise saturate the ccd and wash out the background. Turns out it doesn't work for planes. Ask me how I know!
Its done with using dedicated astrophotography software (StarXTerminator). Example: https://astrobackyard.com/starnet-astrophotography/
So these are more artistic photo works than real science photos...
Rod Prazeres the Astrophotographer, has given this interview where he talks about the process: https://www.astronomy.com/observing/the-astrophotography-of-...
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtfzjehDg74
* transcript: https://otter.ai/u/PA9dbWFA7BgPgLZN9CSo1WFAjXk
* https://www.iflscience.com/wildlife-photographers-viral-squi...
* https://markmangini.com/Mark_Mangini/Blog/Entries/2021/11/7_...
Story of her 'adopting' the squirrels:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tDlh62AVPo
The name of the squirrel is "Baby Pear"; her viral tweet:
* https://twitter.com/DaniConnorWild/status/127534941750838476...
My wife and I saw the movie this weekend, we thought it was great. I adored the book, yet I recognize a book can’t be perfectly translated to the screen.
I thought the directors did a good enough job at translating the sci-fi into something the masses would enjoy.
Kudos to you
That said, I never read Harry Potter and can't imagine going back and reading it now. So, YMMV.
But I am glad I read the book first, I got much more out of it - it goes a lot more in depth into the science and engineering challenges that occur throughout. Which I appreciated. I'm not sure I would have read the book in the same way if I had seen the movie first.
I tend to prefer movies as a storytelling medium, and enjoyed watching the story unfold that way. I ended up just wanting to know more about things that were implied in the movie but not explained, and the book filled in those gaps well.
So if you want to do both, and want to get something new when you do each, then, having done it that way, I would recommend it.
Edit: reviewing my app history, it took me somewhere between 10-11 hours to read the book, and I do not read fiction especially fast.
Watching the movie first will set the stage for a lot of details that work better in a book than a movie.
The way the book is structured there is only one big reveal that would be spoiled by the movie, but I don’t think that was the most interesting thing in the book anyways, it was all about engineering, the scientific method and all that, and I think that will still hold before or after watching.
The one big exception I’ve found to “read the book first” advice to me has been “the expanse” there the books and the series were so great that they sort of complemented each other, and the advice there is “definitely do both”. I was reading the books and watching the series in parallel - side by side.
I do hope Hail Marry is like that…
By reading the book first, you’ll have a better background and understanding of the context of the plot, the science, and the overall objectives of the mission. There are also several “twists” in the book that were cut from the movie for runtime.
I enjoyed the movie after reading because I got to see the story “come to life”.
But I could also understand the perspective of enjoying the movie first, and then having the story/world expanded 8x with a 16hr book.
You’d could equate “movie -> book” order to watching the LoTR standard editions first, and then watching the extended editions.
I listened to the audiobook narrated by Ray Porter (on Audible) and would recommend that production if you enjoy audio.
I don’t think you can go wrong either way :)
I would recommend reading the book first at least.
I recommended it to a co-worker, who ended up going with the audio book, and found he found it good.
This gives me hope because as we move to a post AGI world, the only thing preventing a complete dystopia is supply and demand, if the demand for human generated work will stay and grow, we'll be ok. This is not some save the earth, be vegan, "AI is bad" message. If you follow me you know I'm all in on agentic development and try to use AI for everything I can that makes sense, but I do it to free my time to focus on the important things.
If more companies will go for the real thing, and more people like us will celebrate them for it, and vote for it with their pockets, then AI will serve humanity, and not vice versa.
p.s. If you haven't seen the movie or read the book, then read the book, then see the movie, I'm going to watch it twice, and re-read the book. Yes, it's not Dune, or Hyperion, or Children of Time, or The Left Hand of Darkness, but it's such an amazing storytelling journey that made me go back reading after a 15 years hiatus.
Telescope: William Optics UltraCat 76 Mount: Sky-Watcher Wave 150i Camera: ZWO ASI2600MM-Pro
The camera: ZWO ASI2600MM Pro ~$2000 and telescopes: Askar 130PHQ Quadruplet Refracting Astrograph ~$3500 and William Optics WIFD Ultra-Cat 76 APO Refractor ~$2200. Mount: Skywatcher NEQ6 Pro ~$1300. Probably also some specialized tripod, adapters, software and lots of time and care. Remarkable results for essentially 'serious hobbyist' money.
I am currently reading the book.
No one has ever or could ever observe a nebula with zero stars in the frame.
Amazing movie and the end credit visuals WERE incredible!
If by "not real", you mean "you removed the stars so it no longer reflect reality!", then real photograph doesn't exist. For example, OP uses narrow-band filters, and it's common to map H-alpha wavelength, which is red, to green in the images. Does that make it unreal?
In the end, astrophotography is more art than science; the goal is more about producing aesthetically-pleasing images than doing photometry. Photographers must take some artistic license.
