It’s deja vu
all over again, as someone (Yogi Berra?) once famously said. Once again I find myself struggling up a steep learning curve, advancing an inch and sliding back a foot, trying to produce an acceptable color image of a deep space object, like a galaxy or planetary nebula. The further I get into the process, the more I suspect that it may require talents that my Maker may not have seen fit to give me. My model ship-building experience dating back some 7 or 8 years comes to mind.
But I struggle on, hoping to some day produce something like this. 
Here is the process. At the controls of one of the telescopes at mytelescope.com, on a clear night with “good seeing,” I first make multiple black and white exposures of the target galaxy. These exposures are stacked to produce the equivalent of one long exposure with a higher signal-noise ratio. So far, so good. I download this image to my computer..
Second, I make three more black and white exposures of my target galaxy through blue, green, and red filters. These images are also downloaded to my computer. Again, so far, so good, I think, so I sign off from MyTelescope.
I won’t try to describe what comes next, but it involves the Adobe Photoshop program, and a Photoshop expert I ain’t. I might never become one, but I cherish a faint, glimmering hope that, with the help of software that is smarter and more creative than I am, I will be able to come fairly close to a presentable color image. Stay tuned.
Dave, thinking if my grasp is beyond my reach, what is heaven for? (Mangled quotation. Sorry.)
All my life I’ve watched my dad struggling up various learning curves! Just a few, ham radio, tying fish flies, organic gardening, photography, building a houseboat in our garage and driveway, and of course being an engineer learning business, mostly self taught through constant reading and at Harvard. Great example, I hope I’ve inherited that lifetime love of learning.
Gee, I didn’t think anyone was watching! And it’s very kind of you to call it “lifetime love of learning.” Others tend to call it obsessive-compulsive disorder.
I was looking through the last through posts, seeing that you’re up to something here that is interesting. On another, space related note, Angela and I watched a great little movie the other night called “Privileged Planet” that I think featured a science/theological writer that you talked about on here named Gonzalez. Is that right? He was talking about cosmology. Anyway, it was a very good film that gave a stimulating case for the unique situation our planet inhabits. The lasting argument was that there may be a purpose or design to our existence given all the vital necessities needed for complex life to survive in the cosmos. There was more to it of course, but I’m not writing a review. Hope to see you sometime soon.