Usually when astronomers talk about “red” or “blue” stars, the “red” stars just have an orange cast to them, and the “blue” stars are mostly white with a blue cast. But there are carbon stars that can be intense red (i.e. as red as the tail-lights on a car) ... but most are pale red / orange, yellow, white, or slightly blue cast.
There are no green stars. There are no violet stars. When you see those colors, they are manufacturered effects.
As I look at these images, I realize many of them are just colored in Photoshop.
You can naturally get the spinning (StarStax does this). The “meteors” effect isn’t real. The spiral effect *could* be done by _very_ slowly zooming over many hours ... but it’d be very hard to do that without some sort of motorized zoom... so that’s more than likely also a processed technique and not as-shot. Also most zooms shift focus as you zoom making it very difficult to do this *and* get sharp stars at the same time.
Many of the swirl effects are natural and you get these based on where you point the camera and what sort of focal length or lens is selected.
These images are a combination of real night-sky photography combined with some photoshop work (some of which is fairly heavy photoshop work).
Tim Campbell
5D III, 5D IV, 60Da
