Click on the above image to bring up a rollover graphic with labels for both deep sky objects (hover mouse over the image) and labels for dark nebulae (click mouse on image). The three images total 1 Mb. If you prefer to view them separately, those links can be found further below.
It's been a pretty lengthy dry spell for me on the sketching front. I've had to keep late nights to a minimum lately.
I did have a chance to process some wide field Milky Way photos I shot during the summer. While visiting Dave Frisk's home observatory outside of Williams, Arizona, I shot some wide shots of the Summer Milky Way. There were three sets, and this is the first one I put serious effort into. The problem is that the city of Williams lies to the south of Dave's home, and although the light pollution was modest, it still threw some very tough yellow gradients onto the far south portion of the image. My processing skills aren't the best to begin with, and LP gradient removal is a huge hurdle. This photo is rotated so that the gradient is along the right quarter of the image. I did my best on it, but it's still apparent.
I took on the challenge of trying to identify as many deep sky objects as I could. And with this part of the sky, that was a LOT of objects. I was able to spot many more than I marked, but they only show up on the full size image, and it was frankly a much larger project than I wanted to take on. Clicking the image will take you to a large version with rollover graphics. Moving your mouse over the image will show the deep sky objects and constellation figures. Clicking on the image will show the Barnard dark nebula I was able to detect in the image.
If you don't want to mess with the rollover graphic, here are the separate large files:
Original Image
Image with Labeled Deep Sky Objects
Image with Labeled Barnard Dark Nebulae
