The Cluster Has Begun To Form by NefariousDrO

2D • Space • posted on May 07, 2011

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Description

Made entirely within Photoshop, this is a combination of photographs of clouds, various random-cloud filters, lensflares, and other dabblings. I'm not eve sure how many layers are in this one. It's meant to be an active star-forming region that will eventually become an open cluster of stars once they burn off the remaining clouds of gas and dust. Our region of space probably looked something like this back before our star was born, but evidence suggests a super-massive nova cleared our region out of most debris before it had a chance to turn into a true cluster. Thus we are in a rather quiet neighborhood. although it While it may seem bad at first glance: not as many stars nearby, no really pretty nebulae to investigate, etc. This is actually a good thing because too active of a neighborhood means far too much radiation for fragile organic life to survive. Thanks for taking a look, have a good weekend, and happy mother's day to all of the moms out there!

Comments (19)

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bobrgallegos

2:38PM | Sat, 07 May 2011

Awesome, I feel like I'm floating in space.

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geirla

3:11PM | Sat, 07 May 2011

Very nice! I think you've really captured the early angry knots of protostars forming in the clouds.

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Ancel_Alexandre

3:25PM | Sat, 07 May 2011

Greatly done!

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Faemike55

3:47PM | Sat, 07 May 2011

Very beautiful work

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wotan Online Now!

4:33PM | Sat, 07 May 2011

Cool!

geoffwoods

5:45PM | Sat, 07 May 2011

Looks like a wonderful abstract painting. Great photoshop work. Geoff.

Apple_UK

8:36PM | Sat, 07 May 2011

Who needs NASA - we have Dr0 :) nicely done

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kjer_99

8:56PM | Sat, 07 May 2011

You've certainly done a great job of illustrating the process of star cluster formations.

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Chipka

9:50PM | Sat, 07 May 2011

That's the thing about fun astronomical neighborhoods...all of the really exciting things are busy spewing out radiation, gravitational contortions and all of the sorts of fun things that keep life from evolving too close to all of the action. Give me a quiet neighborhood any day: I can depend on other humans for excitement (some good and some bad.) And as for the image itself, I love it. You've captured that proto-stellar/proto-planetary/proto-cool/proto-weird/proto-really-interesting-for-crazy-Nemaeans vibe perfectly and I love the fact that the overall color scheme indicates that there's more reflection going on than overt excitement of hydrogen (probably something that's already happening but isn't yet visible.) The sheer mass of the proto-object is quite stunning and as good as anything Hubble (and the proposed James Webb) could show us, without those annoying "exaggerated colors" to contend with. I can imagine myself (and others) on an observation vessel of some nice sort, hovering quite some distance away from all of this intense action, and I rather like that feeling. Great layer work too...you've replicated the complex layers that "true existence" often reveals once we do science to it and realize just how busy the universe actually is. In short, I really like this image for both what it is and what it implies. And yeah, as noted in an earlier comment, I've got Vikings on the brain (and it's so good to see that there are no Vikings here. Nothing against them, but I somehow think that guys with names like "Eric Two-Beards" might somehow skew the overall majesty of this image into a more...um...seafaring direction. This is really great work, as always. Oh, and I forgot to mention that I really love the dark, sooty globules of space-gunk floating around this energetic mass. They give such a wonderful sense of depth and realism that recalls all of the best images I've seen of the Horsehead Nebula, one of my favorite dark, sooty things. Yeah, I like this.

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