I enjoy image processing but was on hiatus for a few months after getting tired of digging through Hubble's archive. I know there's still more to find in there, but sometimes I feel like I'm going in circles. More than once have I been looking at some data and only to realize I've already worked on this or that.

Then, about two months ago, William Keel posted a GALEX image of NGC 6872 in an APOD discussion thread for the same galaxy. I decided to go poking around in the MAST Data Discovery Portal and check out the FITS files. Eyeing some fresh astro images rekindled the old flame. One thing led to another, and before I knew it, I was creating a big Andromeda mosaic out of GALEX data; the Helix Nebula came next.

From there, I ended up in Spitzer's archive, which is yet another observatory I've been meaning to check into. I processed Spitzer's Helix and then found the Pleiades and did them, too. Spitzer's archive was full of tremendously beautiful imagery, but not for the entire sky. The Pleiades mosaic doesn't extend far beyond the stars themselves. I was curious!

Enter WISE. By now, after working with Spitzer, I've convinced myself these infrared datasets haven't received nearly as much attention as they deserve outside the astronomical community, and I think I might know why. A lot of people do not like infrared astronomy. It takes extra effort to interpret an image that has an unfamiliar color palette, and if you don't like the way it's presented, you might have little motivation to put forth any such effort.

I decided to process the WISE Pleiades mosaic and try out some color palettes to see if I could satisfy my own personal aesthetic and then test it on my followers. They seemed to love it, so that's a good sign. If the fact that it was infrared bothered anyone, they didn't speak up.

Here are the lovely Pleiades and their associated filaments and clumps of dust. To their south is a diffuse warm glow known as the zodiacal light. I am very impressed by how bright it is in this picture and the dynamic range with which it presents. In visible light, it's often barely discernible if you can even find skies dark enough to view it. It's bright enough in infrared to pose a bit of a nuisance to astronomers, but in this case I think it is wonderful.