My astrophotography in the movie Project Hail Mary
rpastro.square.site
rpastro.square.site
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
So:
Redcat: 250 / 50 * 1.5 =7.5x magnification
Askar : 1000 / 50 * 1.5 =30x magnification
This is deep sky photography. Doesn't require lots of magnification. What it does require is dark skies and lots of exposure time.
I wish he had more info on his site about his capture process, but it sounds like some of his captures are over multiple nights? I'm not entirely clear on the terminology here:
Integration: 17h 50′
Hα: 30×600″ (5h)
OIII: 31×600″ (5h 10′)
SII: 37×600″ (6h 10′)
RGB Stars: 30×60″ each channel (1h 30′ total)
https://www.instagram.com/p/DToHq5sk_6r/?img_index=1
I may be wrong with all of this. I haven't done any astrophotography since I was a teen and that was just a 50 mm Nikon SLR on the back of a Celestron 8" CST with motorized manual tracking from highly suboptimal skies (Miami, FL). Still, got some decent shots of the Orion nebula.
35 mm obviously.
Jazz hands
My website is also www.rpastro.com.au :)
Congrats on this, not only you got credits on a feature movie, you got one of the good ones. Cloud 9 for you, enjoy!
Greetings from Minas Gerais
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?
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!
Maybe the only way is to screenshot the Project Hail Mary credits when it comes to streaming.
It sure sounds like you value his work at less than a dollar per image. The desktop-background market may not be something he's interested in.
> Maybe the only way is to screenshot the Project Hail Mary credits when it comes to streaming.
...and this may be the reason he's not interested in the desktop background market. You make a single sale, and the image is trivially reproduced. Doing it for pennies is not a winning proposition; prints have better margins.
If you want pretty and free nebula pictures, you can have Generative AI make as many as you like - if you want his work: you'll have to abide by his terms.
I understand where he's coming from - even at $100/download others can make reprints and take away print sales, which is presumably where he gets most of his revenue.
I get it. It's just too bad that I won't be able to fully enjoy his body of work without spending $$$ on prints.
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!
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
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?
> 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.
Your work is stellar and I love the shapes and patterns in your photographs.
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!
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!
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!
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-...
I have yet to see a precise technical definition of what "generative AI" means, but StarXTerminator uses a neural network that generates new data to fill in the gaps where non-stellar objects are obscured by stars. And it advertises itself as "AI powered".
But that's very different to saying that no generative AI was used at all in their production. "AI augmented" sounds pretty accurate to me.
Likewise, if someone posted a photo taken with their iPhone where they had used the built-in AI features to (for instance) remove people or objects, and then they claimed that no AI was involved, I would consider that misleading, even if the photo accurately depicts a real scene in other respects.
https://astrobackyard.com/starnet-astrophotography/
“StarNet is a neural network that can remove stars from images in one simple step leaving only the background. More technically, it is a convolutional residual net with encoder-decoder architecture and with L1, Adversarial and Perceptual losses.”
> So these are more artistic photo works than real science photos...
I agree that the claim "no generative AI used" is technically incorrect, but I do feel that the image does not contain any AI-hallucinated content and therefore is an accurate representation of reality. These structures appear in the image exactly as they exist in nature.
The "generative" part is that the algorithm is filling in a plausible guess as to what would have been observed if there was no star "in the way".
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!
> Traditionally (pre-ai) you would use another image of the same part of the sky and negate the items that you want to remove from the image.
Why does the technique not work with aircraft? Because they generally fly on fixed routes?
This time-lapse probably better visualizes it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFpeM3fxJoQ
Maybe for some close stars parallax might work to remove them over the course of half a year. But no way could the Earth's rotation during a single night move background stars out of a nebulae.
Don't forget that not only does the star need to be removed, but also the diffraction spikes. Those are internal reflections in the lens assembly - not mapped by any star catalog ))
How do you know? :)
* 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
I would recommend reading the book first at least.
The book is more of a true sci-fi novel, with the relationship stuff keeping it interesting.
I liked both a lot, and think both could be enjoyed fully with or without the other, in either order.
That said, I never read Harry Potter and can't imagine going back and reading it now. So, YMMV.
That's normal, and precisely why my general rule is the opposite. Watch the movie first, and then if you like it the book expands on and deepens it. If you read the book first then when you watch the movie you'll just be annoyed at how much was left out or dumbed down.
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.
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 :)
Watching the movie first will set the stage for a lot of details that work better in a book than a movie.
I recommended it to a co-worker, who ended up going with the audio book, and found he found it good.
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.
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…
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!
Fine, but is still art photography with heavy processing. Not to criticize the amazing work of Rod Prazeres, who has now commented on this thread.
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.
“StarNet is a neural network that can remove stars from images in one simple step leaving only the background. More technically, it is a convolutional residual net with encoder-decoder architecture and with L1, Adversarial and Perceptual losses.”
If you remove the stars you have to fill it in with what is there..behind the star, but you cant possibly know.... It could be another star, a black hole etc...Since you have to make it nice to display movie credits, you are going to fill in the space with genai images similar to the rest of the background. You might draw curved to the right when in reality if you observe from behind the star, it curves to the left...