StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Some photoshop genius out there (definitely not me) decided to merge images from National Geographic with other high-res pictures taken from orbit. I wanted to improve the original creation though, so I played with the light and added stars to make it a bit more realisic.

Here's the original image that the creator made: (devoid of stars and you can see the leeside of the planet)



..And here it is after I added stars, removed the moon (it was causing trouble, unfortunately ) and re-did the light levels:




Full-sized versions (1280x1024):


the original:
http://img377.imageshack.us/img377/8477 ... ood2yw.jpg

and the adaptation with stars:
http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/3736 ... all8fb.jpg


It's really not much, I just wanted to share an adaptation of a really cool desktop wallpaper.

Nitpick, but doesn't the addition of stars make it less realistic? IIRC, the light from a view that close of the lit side of a planet like Earth would drown out all but the very brightest of stars.

I do like the change you did to the lighting on Earth, though. One thing I would change would be to darken the clouds on the night side. I don't think they'd be that visible compared to the ocean.

Jogurt is right. The stars would not be visible except for the very brightest, because the exposure required to get a reasonable light level of the earth would dim the stars to nothingness.

Beowulf wrote:Jogurt is right. The stars would not be visible except for the very brightest, because the exposure required to get a reasonable light level of the earth would dim the stars to nothingness.

But if you where in space though you could possibly see the stars with your own eyes while a camera couldn't.

Not true. On the moon, astronauts couldn't see the stars because they were in the sun. Their pupils were just too small to colect enough light to see the stars. It's only when you are in shadow, away from a light source like the Earth or the Sun, that you can see stars in space.

Wicked Pilot wrote:

Beowulf wrote:Jogurt is right. The stars would not be visible except for the very brightest, because the exposure required to get a reasonable light level of the earth would dim the stars to nothingness.

But if you where in space though you could possibly see the stars with your own eyes while a camera couldn't.

As others have said, a person could only see stars in space if they were in deep shadow, and there were no bright sources of light within their field of view. Our pupils are roughly 6 millimeters wide at their fullest, so they don't gather much light. The reason we can see stars before a film camera can is because our retinas are a bit more light-sensitive, and our brains are continually integrating the signals. However, our miniscule pupils limit us to around magnitude 6 or so. A camera using a substantially bigger objective and enough exposure time can pick up ludicrously faint objects that we can't even hope to see with the naked eye.

And the reason the original poster was having problems with the Moon is quite obvious. The Moon is embedded in a gray square which is distinctly different in color than the rest of the background. Carefully clipping out the Moon and dropping it back in on the second image should produce good results.

Okay, I still couldn't solve the brushwork problems with the moon, but to satisfy all ye nitpickers:



1280x1024 screen size:

http://img235.imageshack.us/img235/7263 ... jpg8rd.jpg


EDIT: another improvement on that, after I noticed some leftover clouds on the nightside:

http://img154.imageshack.us/img154/8926 ... est6vt.jpg

Vehrec wrote:Not true. On the moon, astronauts couldn't see the stars because they were in the sun. Their pupils were just too small to colect enough light to see the stars. It's only when you are in shadow, away from a light source like the Earth or the Sun, that you can see stars in space.

Wrong. The astronauts could see the stars, they just couldn't see them near the horizon. Unlike the Earth, the moon has no atmosphere to light up when the sun is shining and so they can look directly into space with the sun to their backs and they could see the stars.