Widefield Milkyway.
 

Milky Way- southern region in Sagittarius. The brown is a dust cloud.

why do all the shots look slightly out of focus when compressed?

second attempt

edit- oh well, you get the idea. :)

They look cool man. Here is a trick... save the file as 1280 X 1280 (websize)THEN sharpen them for computer display. It won't take much sharpening.

Thanks, Rob.. I will try that next time.

Resizing should happen last. This way you can do all of your editing on the photo at 100% and then you can size down from there. When you size down you shouldn't have any loss in sharpness, but if you do then check to make sure you're using bicubic sampling.

The problem is more likely that Wakeworld resizes your images when you upload them to the site. I've noticed in the past that if you upload an image that is more than ____px on the long edge that WW will automatically resize the image and compress the crap out of it. This is probably where the blurriness is coming from. Since I discovered this I've just decided to leave my pics elsewhere and hotlink them here.

I guess I would disagree Scott although everyone edits differently. Most pro bird photographers I know will tell you that you edit the picture (layer mask, some initial sharpening, crop), then resize, then final sharpen. A file that is 1280X1280 (websize) will require far less sharpening than a file that is 5680X4650. I generally use NIK for final sharpening and a websize pic looks ridiculous if I apply the same sharpening presets as I would on a large file out of a 5D.

I upload my pics to Flickr then post them here via hotlink also....

I have noticed a lose of sharpness when posting here, I have posted some of the same photos here and on FM and the IQ always seems much better on FM. Good thing too because it's hard enough to make those bird shooters happy :D

Beautiful shots Barry. Nicely captured.

Cool stuff Barry. I wish you would post more of it.

Thanks! I also wish I'd post more of it. . The problem is that in each one of these shots is at LEAST 20 hours of work between set-up, data collection and processing. Finding time right now is pretty tough as I'm working on another project.

Those are awesome shots. What is the set-up Barry? I am curious... Really interesting shots man.

Those shots were taken with a 40D on an ATLAS EQ-G mount and guided through a StellarVue 80raptor with a SSAG.
That shot isn't that difficult, maybe 4-5 hours involved. It's the nebula/galaxy shots that take so long(as if 4-5 hours isn't long enough). The process is basically the same, but the set-up is far more precise and data collection is between 8-15 hours alone.
The mount has to set-up to track the Earths rotation perfectly because the exposure times are between 5-50 minutes(average is about 20 minutes). The camera is a monochrome CCD so each color has to be taken individually: Luminance, Red, Green, Blue(LRGB) using the same exposure. So, if I take one LRGB series at 20 minutes that's a total of 2.6 hours per series.. to get sufficient data to gather detail/color I generally need at least 4 series, sometimes more... Generally the series spans over more than one night. Then I have to take dark and bias to subtract from each LRGB image. Data collection is complete: So now I have 4 shots in each color for a total of 16.. Each need to have dark/bias subtractions and each needs to be processed individually. Then I need to align and stack each color individually so I have one shot of each color(each shot is really 4 combined shots).. align and stack those.. then final process. :D

I hope that answers your question. :)