Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Starfire Optical Range

Starfire Optical Range

Three green lasers are seen emanating from facilities at the Starfire Optical Range on Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico. Lasers and deformable optics are used here to eliminate or minimize optical distortions caused by the Earth’s atmosphere.

Edit 01. Reduced large amount of noise and downsampled to 80%

Reason: Caught My Eye (Wow)
Articles this image appears in: Starfire Optical Range
Creator: United States Air Force

Support as nominator — TomStar81 (Talk) 08:52, 2 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support edit 01 Photographing lasers probably creates a lot of photographic noise, I uploaded a version with noise reduction Bleh999 11:42, 2 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose original, strong oppose edit 1 — The original has too much noise, the edit has blurred the edges too much. ♠ SG →Talk 13:11, 2 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Yep, amazing sight but irredeemably poor image of it. It's another "featured subject" submission, where the subject matter is far & away the best thing going for it. Don't get me wrong, it's a valuable addition to the encyclopedia, it just isn't an outstanding photograph. The edit is no better, I'm afraid, possibly worse, as the sky now looks mottled as well as multi-coloured and the whole image is soft. mikaul^talk 14:51, 2 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- True but the edit looks better even as a thumbnail image, the noise is very distracting. I don't think this image can be made into FPC status, it is damaged beyond repair Bleh999 22:57, 2 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Opppose, unfortunately. MIck's thinking very well parallels mine, and I am inclined also to think Bleh's conclusion to be quite right. Joe 03:50, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Question Why can we see the lasers? Lasers are coherent light, so the photons all go into one direction; they don't bounce around. Therefore, you can only see a laser beam when there is lots of stuff in the path of the laser beam, so that the light can bounce off the stuff and hit your retina. The picture in question looks like it was taken on a clear night, when there wouldn't be anything to bounce the light off of. So what is the laser light bouncing off of? Enuja 22:50, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

even on a clear night there is dust and droplets of water vapor in the air. Adaptive optics lasers are pretty bright to begin with, so lots of photons are there to bounce back. Debivort 00:23, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The exposure time is also extremely long...notice the stars moving in a circular pattern. Jumping cheese ^Cont@ct 03:42, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Not promoted MER-C 03:11, 8 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]