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| I signed up for Telescope Live around Christmas since I was getting antsy being unable to use my own telescope since our summertime nights are so short and cloudy here on New Zealand's South Island. If nothing else, it gave me a lot of material to use to build up my skills with Pixinsight and AstroPixel Processor, and I've enjoyed being able to work on data that I could never collect myself if only because of geography. Now that it's autumn here, I expect I'll use TL a lot less and rely on my own telescope more, but I'll keep the account live and maybe use it to image some things that I cannot see from down here. |
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This discussion kind of reminds me of what I read in 3D printing forums and communities. Some people enjoy the fussing with the hardware vs producing something with that technology. There is no right or wrong way to do what you like to do, but to be prejudiced or opinionated on what others choose to do as a badge of honor is absurd. You don't win anything by staying up late, fussing with back focus, trying to remove tilt or getting trapped in gear acquisition syndrome and chasing the gear dragons. Your images aren't better because you chose to suffer or have a bigger wallet or a bigger stomach for debt. As far as cost goes, most people are looking at it in isolation rather than in terms of economics. Sure, if you take tons of photos and use your gear a lot your cost per sub is low, but that's hardly the economics of the whole thing. How much is your time worth? Are you happy with your images? Do you still sleep? Is it really as economical as you think it is?? (this hobby isn't cheap). For example, using a remote telescope at a bortle 1 sky with a faster scope, I'm freed from chasing the hardware dragons and I collect more data in shorter period of time with fewer subs needed to integrate for a higher quality image. I don't have to drag my family out camping at a dark only to ignore them and stay up late fiddling with gear. I can image a few data sets in a remote sky for less than the price I'd pay in taxes on purchasing 20-70k worth of hardware - yet alone having it all up and running and maintained for me. Now i bring a visual scope camping and we all enjoy the dark sky and go eat some marshmallows. We should spend a lot less time debating how much someone suffers to get an image and spend a lot more time championing people for how much someone makes the community better through their work. Sharing, guiding, teaching and creating and maybe even making new discoveries. I am fond of my memories of setup and tear down and enjoyed some of the hacking away, but that was temporary in and of itself. I can fill that void of hands on much better with EAA and visual because i can be social with that too and not so isolating (ignoring my family) or isolated (keep it dark!) and leave astrophotography to the dark sky robotics observatories while I sleep. Astronomers do this. Technology is doing all the work for us anyway... may as well embrace the data and if you like the hands-on approach, experience it with others and with your own eyes. AP is terrible for that. |
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In fact sometimes you will see the same data set win the same award from 2 or 3 different people, and quite possibly a same data set will have 2 separate awards in 2 different narrow band color palettes, which is amazing. Maybe I am just old school but that just seems wrong. Data buyers are not imagers, they are processors. You might as well download Hubble data and that is free. |
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Bill McLaughlin:In fact sometimes you will see the same data set win the same award from 2 or 3 different people, and quite possibly a same data set will have 2 separate awards in 2 different narrow band color palettes, which is amazing. You're not old school, you're just wrong  Did you engineer your camera, your mount, your filters? Did you code your own software? did you write all the algorithms? Didn't think so.Gatekeeping is bad. Period. |
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| Gatekeeping is good, keep it on Bill. |
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Byron Miller: Your comment started well enough, and I agree completely that there is no right or wrong way to do things. Being prejudiced or opinionated on what others do is absurd, especially when it is a hobby. But the rest of your comment seemed to completely contradict that sentiment by seemingly criticising people that prefer to perform astrophotography completely using their own equipment with many erroneous statements. Byron Miller: You don't have to stay up late. Automation has allowed people to be sound asleep while their equipment is doing all the hard work in their backyards. The more automated things are, the less suffering you will have. Having a fatter wallet may not mean or guarantee that your images will improve, but there is no doubt those skilled enough AND have a fatter wallet do have better images. Just look at some of the work that Wolfgang Pomper and John Hayes are producing with their own telescopes. Their skillset AND a fat wallet surely helped improve their images. At the same time, if all you want is astrophotography with a Seestar S50 there is absolutely nothing wrong with that and I love that such devices are available to be more inclusive. I don't know what other people's finances are, but I don't think it is ever wise to go into debt for a hobby like AP. But also please don't presume people with expensive equipment are "in debt", to just feel better about your own decisions. As far as cost goes, most people are looking at it in isolation rather than in terms of economics. Sure, if you take tons of photos and use your gear a lot your cost per sub is low, but that's hardly the economics of the whole thing. How much is your time worth? Are you happy with your images? Do you still sleep? Is it really as economical as you think it is?? (this hobby isn't cheap). For example, using a remote telescope at a bortle 1 sky with a faster scope, I'm freed from chasing the hardware dragons and I collect more data in shorter period of time with fewer subs needed to integrate for a higher quality image. I don't have to drag my family out camping at a dark only to ignore them and stay up late fiddling with gear. I can image a few data sets in a remote sky for less than the price I'd pay in taxes on purchasing 20-70k worth of hardware - yet alone having it all up and running and maintained for me. Now i bring a visual scope camping and we all enjoy the dark sky and go eat some marshmallows. There is no such thing as "economical" in AP. The most economical way is just download Hubble / JSWT images and be done with it. It is all free. It is all a waste of money, and we just spend it because it brings us joy and satisfaction. No amount of Telescope live data purchases will bring ME joy or satisfaction, like the data that I am getting from my backyard.Many of us enjoy the process of setting up the aquisition hardware just as much as processing the data that we aquired. It doesn't mean we don't see my family or stay up late every time. Automation allows us to setup my equipment 15 minutes before sunset and go do other things and sleep at night. We may have had to spend a few nights troubleshooting and setting up new equipment, but once you get used to your setup it becomes much faster and easier to do. Now that does not mean I will take away from people that enjoy processing Telescope live data. If that is what brings you joy, please keep doing so! It's amazng that we have access to such services now and I definitely see the appeal. We should spend a lot less time debating how much someone suffers to get an image and spend a lot more time championing people for how much someone makes the community better through their work. Sharing, guiding, teaching and creating and maybe even making new discoveries. Again you keep describing image aquistion as "suffering". If you don't enjoy that process I totally understand, but many of us do. Byron Miller: Disagree completely with that. My own AP has been perhaps the single most interesting way of experiencing space with others I had no idea had any interest in it. You can't drag people to your scope. But I have had amazing conversations with people who otherwise when I show them what kind of images I took in my backyard. It is so convenient. You can carry all your images on your phone and share it with other people at any moment. |
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Ashraf AbuSara: It's not a criticism, it's the reality of it. If you take that as criticism, that's all you. You can prefer anything you prefer. I don't dispute that. Read the thread, i wasn't replying to you directly but to the thread where it's obvious people think the "work" or "suffering" or "you clicking the buttons" means you're a real astro photographer and that's laughable at best. Ashraf AbuSara: In that case, why have a beef against remote observatories or downloading data sets? why the long post? If it's all robotic anyway robots are doing the work, not you. Ashraf AbuSara: You misinterpreted my statement. If you don't gatekeep, it doesn't matter how I frame it. If it's automated and pain-free, so is buying data. If you think your data means more because you put the robot pieces together, that's fine. It doesn't mean me using the robot someone else built - which is the reality we all face means I'm not into astrophotography. That's the point. Don't be mad because people buy data or because they run their own scope. It shouldn't matter and doesn't matter and making it matter is a waste of time. |
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Byron Miller: I don't gate keep. If anything you are, by suggesting it is all a waste of time and we should all buy data from Telescope live. It seems you are mad at people collecting their own data, because you seem to suffer when doing it. Byron Miller: If it sounds like a duck, and it walks like a duck. It is a duck. You can't just criticize for a whole page, then turn around, and claim it isn't. Your perception of "reality" is not ubiquitous and absolute. If you suffer through your acquisition, it doesn't mean everyone else does. Byron Miller: I don't have a beef with any of that at all. I am just responding to what sounds like you having a beef with people who don't do either of those things. Many of us just don't enjoy buying data. If you do, all the power to you. But don't try to rationalize it by pretending acquiring your own data is a useless endeavor of suffering and self immolation, to those of us that enjoy it. |
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I am member of Telescope Live, I joined their Silver Plan because I wanted to get hold on targets in the Southern Skies and to get more experience by processing different subs in various ways. TL is OK as long as you do not aim for ultimate quality of the subs you can download. Some are fine, some are acceptable some - especially the older ones, are of very limited quality. The tutorials are OK, some interesting, some not. The available targets are fine, many of them are well known and for advanced interests of very limited interest, some of them are really interesting and worth acquiring. One aspect of astrophotography cannot be replaced by using such an organization - that is to acquire your subs on your own. You learn a lot by doing all yourself - meaning processing is only the half of the game - the other, very important half is to do it right to get good subs. I am considering to cancel my membership with TL sooner of later because what they offer now, is no longer of key interest for me anymore. I learned a lot, but now, I think, I do not want to spend that money monthly for another one or two years. CS Georg |
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Ashraf AbuSara: You keep fighting two sides of a fight I have no skin in because you're taking my general responses to this *thread* personally. I don't care what you do. You shouldn't care what I do. End of story. You don't need to defend yourself. I don't need to defend myself. Period. End. Of. Story. It does not matter how you partake in this hobby whatsoever. Gatekeeping is bad. |
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Georg N. Nyman: The old data sets are CCD images. You have been spoiled with CMOS It takes a bit more effort to process the CCD images, but they're still worth it.This November they will be opening up to a larger network of scopes beyond the nice ones they have and you can always run advanced schedule to image something specific. |
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If a heavyweight boxer and a flyweight boxer were put into the ring, it would be no contest. Putting up remote site images against backyard images is a similar thing. Yawnsville. I'll admit when I was entering the hobby, and came across astrobin, one part of me was impressed by IOTD and initially used it as a target. But tbh that was discarded by the wayside a long time ago. Now it's the tinkering with the kit, the clouds, the data gathering, and then the processing. The journey is a huge part of the reward - images of amazing things in the sky that I've taken is the other part. I've occasionally thought about remote site location for my kit - borne of desperation with the skies & weather. But in the end I haven't pulled the trigger - it's too expensive, and it takes away a big part of what I find is the joy & connection. As for IOTD, it's just a label. And candidly an irrelevant one. I do look at those images - and occasionally hit the like button - but tbh the first I thing I do is scroll down to see how many hundreds of hours from remote sites were involved. And then shrug my shoulders and move on. Every so often you get a backyard non-planetary image, and that comrades is to be cheered. |
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If a heavyweight boxer and a flyweight boxer were put into the ring, it would be no contest. Putting up remote site images against backyard images is a similar thing. Yawnsville. It's all the same sky in the beginning, but our art in the end. |
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If a heavyweight boxer and a flyweight boxer were put into the ring, it would be no contest. Putting up remote site images against backyard images is a similar thing. Yawnsville. ] As a "middleweight" RC12 backyard imager on a dark site, I congratulate today's IOTD winner. Their image of IC4633 (posted a day after mine) and acquired with a 4x larger scope at a private observatory site was clearly a better image. Mine received a top pick nomination, so had clearly been noticed - just not good enough. I have used remote telescopes [TL, Rotoscopes] for about 10% of my images. But my TP(N) percentage is much higher for my backyard images than remote images. After almost 300 images and 51 top picks or nominations for top picks (but no IOTD), I have a reasonable statistical sample to make the following observations: 1) I don't think IOTD is down to remote telescope. 2) I am unlikely to be awarded an IOTD. The TP/IOTD distribution is decidedly non-random and I am on the "wrong" side of it. But it won't stop me trying. 3) It would be nice to be awarded an IOTD, but the general support of my AB friends means much more to me. 4) Use whatever telescope/location/processing floats your boat. Just enjoy. CS Brian |
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I quote Brian: ......1) I don't think IOTD is down to remote telescope. 2) I am unlikely to be awarded an IOTD. The TP/IOTD distribution is decidedly non-random and I am on the "wrong" side of it. But it won't stop me trying. 3) It would be nice to be awarded an IOTD, but the general support of my AB friends means much more to me. ...... I myself have a similar viewpoint - some of the TP/IOTD pictures are for me awarded without any objective reason to get this award - I usually compare those winners with other entries of the same target and think, that I do see the reason for that one to be the IOTD - but, I am not one of the judges. I have quite a lot of TOP PIC nominations and enjoy that recognition, because it tells me that my many hours of work had been seen and awarded. Some of the IOTD picture are just undoable for "normal" astrophotographers with slightly better than average equipment, location and time. But if those images are really outstanding (many are), it is OK for me. What amazes me is that quite a lot of astrophotographers have equipment worth between 75000 und a few hundred thousands of Dollars/Euros - wow! What I enjoy most is that I have a large number of astrofriends who like my pictures and my work - that is for me personally worth much more than maybe one or another IOTD. I thank everyone of those, who like my pictures very much for their likes. BTW - I am also a "middleweight" RC12 backyard imager on a rural site... CS Georg |
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Brian Boyle: I have a similar perspective. I image with a couple of cheap Newts from a suburban backyard (on the increasingly rare occasions it's not cloudy here). One cost me around US$250, the other around US$500. My EQ6-R mount was affordable, my camera is second-hand... this is all done on a budget. I try to make the most of what I have, doing significant mechanical work on the Newts, tuning my mount, constantly obsessing over image FWHM and experimenting with anything that will deliver tighter stars. I doubt I'll get IOTD, but I've managed to get a handful of TP images despite my budget setup, and that makes me happy. In fact, a TP with a $250 telescope makes me happier than I'd be if I managed an IOTD with data acquired from high-end gear. But that's just me. I like tinkering and trying to push cheap gear to perform better than it has any right to. I initially bought these Newts as a stopgap while I worked out if I enjoyed imaging, but I've resisted upgrading because I think I can push them even further. This hobby is so varied that this perspective is just one of a multitude. If, on the other hand, others don't like the fuss of waiting for a clear night, and don't like tinkering with a temperamental setup, then they don't have to do that. They can simply opt out of that process by using a remote facility. That's fine. There are no rules here. |
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Like Rudiger, I see no interest in processing data that I have not acquired myself. Of course, I would like to image more at home (Switzerland), but remote AP helps to mitigate the frustration ! I use remote AP with my own equipment in Spain (Astrocamp), and with the high-end scopes of Skygems in Namibia. Great to get nice images from the Southern Hemisphere, there are so many gems that we have to discover there! Philippe |
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| If you just want to buy an image hubble has a few available for free. The photographer part of the hobby is the most satisfying aspect. Backyard specifically. |
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Satisfaction is what you get out of doing something for enjoyment. The backyard aspect certainly has some enjoyment, but I'd say it's often fleeting. Take one wet spring for example... a few weeks or months away from your gear and that determination is gone. Go back out and the cold hard reality of debugging everything settles back in, and you change things, notice things, want to improve things... "gear acquisition syndrome" kicks in. Heck... if you care about IOTD of the day at all - you're already in a losing streak unless your focus is on PROCESSING and for the best data, you absolutely need to have good data and today, collaborate with people to collect more good data than any one person can reasonably do. Some people do this with more time and money than most of us will never have... Yah, sorry... not everyone can have an AP1100 mount with a 16" CDK or a AP130 with custom made adaptors that cost more than some people's entire setup(s) - BUT with remote observatories, data sharing and collaborations - you can compete with these deep wallet folks without having to take on the debt/acquire the gear but just borrow/lease/share the data... That's the part of AP that is missing and I'm happy to see is improving. There are some nice collab groups that started producing some amazing work. This reduces the "GAS" problem because you can used shared data and it gets you interacting with folks and learning and pushing your processing skills. I know so many people who burn out as soon as that first "rhythm" is broken and we all know what that is... that spark of enthusiasm as you learn things, capture things and see what you have done open up in PixInsight only goes on for as long as you keep pushing it on - often resulting in sleepless nights, dreaming of gear, habitually checking forums, weather, hanging out on discord and keeping that attention on every clear night prioritizing you and your hobby at all cost... until it stops but also, i think the hobby is a lot stronger if you focus less on acquisition as a goal and more on "what can you do" - not only can you make pretty images - but you can track exoplanet transients, find asteroids, track asteroids, discover supernovas... all of this becomes much better and much stronger if we were to spend less time on trying to always acquire our own data and re-learn things 100s of times over but share the amazing data we have to make it more available to all to discover, create and enjoy. Turn those passion binge sessions into scheduled opportunities such as if/when a comet is coming by and you can coordinate as needed around that too. I think the fascination with acquisition often creates a very lonely hobby for many and becomes competitive and self-isolating in so many cases. You beat yourself up and get fixated... If you post/share online - you have to be selective in what you care about because the naysayers will nay louder than the supporters - so much so you often get trapped into defensive positions or you just shut your mouth and ignore things and quietly enjoy your hobby and none of this really matters but... in the end... data does... again, we're all imaging the same heavens, often with similar cameras and similar gear and the only difference really is the knowledge/experience of what makes a good master sub frame into a master and in the end, clean data just can't be beat - no matter what - for scientific or photographic use. I keep bringing up the collab thing because it doesn't really matter where the data comes from and collaboration or using multiple data sets is just a good way to improve your outcomes not that you should stop imaging your own skies necessarily but that if the end result is something of quality - such as science or IOTD then that is what it takes to do that today with the reality of our light pollution and city polluted skies. now, i will admit, if i was retired and this is all i had to do... i don't think i'd mind it but even then, i know more retired folks who host at observatories or use remote scopes for AP than who who don't... keeping their local stuff for visual and EAA... but when i do retire and if i still enjoy this hobby, retiring to darker skies will absolutely be a goal and if not, going remote. |
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The range of attitudes about the IOTD is interesting. I’ve held off commenting but I’ll share my feelings about it. 1) Over the years, the IOTD has played a significant role in my own development as an imager. When I first started, the idea of winning an IOTD seemed absurd but I began studying the winners to better gauge my own images. I looked at color rendition, image sharpness and noise reduction to try to figure out what looked the most pleasing according to the judges. Of course there’s often a lot of variation in the selections with some IOTD images being better than others but using these images to judge your own images can be a good way to learn how to improve your own results. For that reason alone, I think that the IOTD is very valuable. 2) If you think that backyard imagers don’t stand a chance, go look through the “Top Imagers” list and see where a lot of top imagers operate. Off the top of my head, I’ll point out one notable example. @Wei-Hao Wang is a professional astronomer, who for may years, used very simple imaging equipment often from the back of his car along the side of some remote road to take stunning images that earned numerous IOTD awards. You do not need tens of thousands of dollars worth of gear to produce a spectacular image. 3) I often see backyard imagers grumbling about all the advantages that remote imagers have and there are indeed some. Yes, you get darker skies and often more clear nights; but remote imaging is NOT trivial. Anyone who has set up a remote telescope will tell you about how difficult it is to set up the equipment and to keep it running. Should there be a separate IOTD category for remote imaging? That’s an arguable point but I personally don’t think so. A good image is a good image no mater where it comes from. A lot of my own IOTD awards came from my time shooting from my backyard and many are easily as good as what I achieved from my remote scopes. 4) The one thing that bothers me as a long time imager (ranging from the back yard, to domestic, and now, international remote imaging) is the rise of data services. Simply downloading Hubble data or image subs from a remote imaging service is a great way to tune up your processing skills and it’s great for folk who live under perpetually cloudy skies; but, it is not the same as fighting through all of the issues (equipment, weather, and the 1,000’s of problems) that need to be overcome to produce your own data. Many data processors are extremely talented and I’m okay with it; but I don’t think that those images should be mixed up in the IOTD process. In my view, that’s an easily solvable problem by simply creating a “Processing award” on the side. Yes, that complicates the process and it raises questions about whether it should be done every day by showing it side-by-side with the IOTD or should it be maybe once a week. I don’t know. My reaction to any awards given only for processing is to generally avoid giving them a “like”, but that’s not really fair either. Some of the processing efforts are genuinely spectacular, but in my view, taking the data is at least half of the battle. In my view, images created from purchased data should be prohibited from the current IOTD process and a separate award created for pure processing. 5). On the flip side, I think that imagers like @Marcel Drechsler (and there are a few others) who find their own new, undiscovered targets, take their own data (often with extreme exposure times), and process the data not only into spectacular images, but as contributions to scientific papers, deserve an even higher level of recognition—call it something like a “platinum achievement award” with no limit on how many times it can be awarded. These are the folks who have take a simple imaging hobby and used it for discovery and as contributions to the science of astronomy and those efforts deserve special recognition. That’s my 2 cents (well maybe it’s a nickel’s worth). John |
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John Hayes: If you're hoping for an IOTD, you are a data processor. This distinction that keeps getting perpetuated that one has to "fight through all the issues" as if they don't have to deal with that in processing an image is absurd. Most people who stick around in this hobby will get to the point where acquisition is just routine. They have a robotic scope, it does everything and they process the image. Most people who don't stick around in this hobby will suffer through problem after problem and simply abandon all hope. Those that had hope that they could download data and create & share images lose all hope when they see posts like this. It's one thing to invent something new and go through the motions to develop the tools, process, hardware and software to make it happen and be creative and inventive... But we're all imaging things that now have been imaged 10s of thousands of time(s) over. The sense of pride you get from accomplishing that doesn't need to hedge on others having to do the same struggles. For if you were around 10 or 20 years ago, the struggle was much worse. Today, you can buy a setup and be imaging in a matter of hours. No different than buying pixinsight and downloading data and being processing in a matter of hours. |
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I would like to share my experience and motivations for using Telescope Live data. I started using it for about a week and the reason was to be able to process targets not available in my location like SH targets and practice processing mono data as I am an OSC imager. Also, clear skies have been pretty rare last couple of months and had no more data to process which is what I enjoy most with this hobby. I have been doing astrophotography for a bit over 2 years now. I came across this hobby by luck after watching YouTube videos about using the Celestron 8SE for visual. I had just acquired it and was not aware I could photograph space targets as at the time. Once I was made aware I was hooked but my enthusiasm faded when I realized the Celestron 8SE was not a scope to be used for astrophotography. None the less, I acquired a DSLR and started shooting. Learning curve was steep and learned a lot in the process. Lots of frustrations and wasted nights but was still determined. Using a reducer enable me to get some pretty decent images but it was a pain to acquire data. I then got a star tracker and learned how to use with my dslr and kit lens. Learned a lot from that experience especially in processing finding ways to fix issues in the images like chromatic aberration. I think the lessons acquired capturing data with this set-up made me a better processor. I am now shooting with a Red Cat 51 and AM3 mount. I used the OTA of the 8SE on the AM3 mount since February for galaxy season and had good results. Using Telescope Live data made me realize that to get better, I need to capture better data either with better gear or sky. I realized that, although there is still much to learn, I am better at processing as I have now 2 pictures that are TLPOD, and 2 top pick nominations. Before I would get 1 submitter promoting some of my images. I still go out every clear night and image. Still lusting for gear but with Telescope Live I have access to data that I can process and learn from when I have none of my data to process. I do have more pride in the pictures I produce with my own data but seeing what I can do with good data shows me what will be possible once I acquire better gear/data. Not sure if processing data you did not acquire makes it less legitimate but I believe there is value in using it for growth, learning and scratching the itch when you have none of your data available because of weather, time etc.. |
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I don't know about folks here, but the highest point during every project or image I take is when I open that freshly stacked hours of data from WBPP and do that first auto STF. That's the closest thing to stargazing I will ever do from my light polluted backyard. I often just gawk at it for a long time studying it up and taking in the site before I actually move on to post processing it. Maybe that will fade away, who knows. But the only reason I get that jolt of joy is because I know that those hours of stacked data are data that I produced from my own backyard. Sure I can just look up that target on Astrobin and find a thousand people that imaged it better than I did. That doesn't bring me the same joy though. Again there is nothing wrong with getting data from remote sites, or buy data from professional service providers. Everyone needs to find joy in what they do, and stop caring about what others think. |
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Byron Miller:John Hayes: While I certainly agree that the astro-imaging equipment available to amateurs has reached a very high level, I strongly disagree that "you can buy a setup and be imaging in a matter of hours" to produce the quality of data that is available for downloading. I've been at this for a long time and I don't think that I've ever reached a point where data acquisition is routine--and the many of the stories that I've included with my images backs that up. Problems with stray light, camera failures, focuser problems, guiding issues, tube currents, boundary layer currents, dew & frost, sensor frost, vibration problems, weather related issues, problems with rodents (chewing through cables), changes in the camera performance, ground loops, failed PCs, weird software problems, optical alignment issues, focuser problems, dirt getting into the filter wheel, timing problems, car lights, failed networks, tilted components in the image train, cable and connector problems, unexpected excessive vignetting, component spacing issues, mechanical backlash, stray light issues, diffraction from turning marks inside of extension tube, are just a few of the things that I (and others) experience trying to gather data. All of this stuff requires problem solving skills and tremendous perseverance to overcome. In my experience, the process of acquiring high quality data is a big part of producing a quality image and it is not easy. Many folks spend months and sometimes years getting it dialed in. There is a lot going on behind the curtain when you submit an order for data that you might want to process. And, we aren't all imaging objects that have been imaged 10's of thousands of times; although the data that you buy is often of commonly imaged objects. The goal for a lot of us is to produce a new view of whatever target we select whether or not it has been images thousands of times. Sometimes that leads to the discovery of new objects--both nebula and super nova. As I've said, I'm totally ok with folks who only do processing but that is only a part of what imagers who run their own equipment have to do. Imagers who do it all are "competing" in a triathlon. That's different than a bike race, a swimming meet, or a marathon. Every effort is good but as it's run now, the IOTD mixes up the folks doing the triathlons with, say, just the runners. That's why I personally think that it makes sense to separately recognize imagers and processors as two distinct groups just as they do in sports competitions--and I don't say that to belittle anyone. You don't have to agree but that's how I see it. John |
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John Hayes: I like your idea for a "platinum" award. I once suggested "lifetime achievement" award...for Gary Imm 😀 These breathtaking and gasping out loud images we are posting are certainly reward enough to me. We are living Carl Sagan's quote, “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” I marvel at this universe through our images. I would also say I marvel at the creation though our images. -john |
