0.00
#... |
|---|
 Sorry Salvatore - thought I would share all my thoughts - as you are aware many agree and many disagree - good luck working it all out but sure you will get a solution that works for allPaddy |
|
0.00
#... |
|---|
|
I also think that Hubble data or Remote Imaging data should be posted in a different category. Because although setting up and imaging is repetetive....it is never tedious.....You are always bound to encounter problems which u have to overcome to image. To image 4,5,10,20 hours...thats serious effort. Astrophotography is not processing....its also processing...... So I have the outmost respect for backyarders who really struggle to image and complete their projects after enduring the hardship of travelling many kilometers under bad conditions many times and present data of quality. It is clearly not my goal to dimish people who use ready data.....I am also thinking to go remote for when the weather does not permit me to go to the field.....however, it is extremely unfair to compare remote data with data acquired under real life conditions. |
2.10
#... |
|---|
|
Salvatore, The issue you raised is a legitimate one. Many APers look upon images generated from data that was not personally collected, that is by hand, operating their own equipment, as something less than fair, or at best, not something they are even interested in. We have people in our club who feel exactly that way. I make no judgments about that. point of view. To each his or her own. Collecting your own data from your back yard, having your own observatory, operating or collecting data from a remote site, cooperating with others to generate images or downloading data from a professional telescope, all seems fair to me. ANY ATTEMPT TO PARSE OUT IMAGES BASED ON HOW OR WHERE THE DATA COMES FROM IS, IMHO, DESTINED TO FAIL. Let's be clear about this. The quality of an image depends on both the quality of the raw data and the skill of the processor. Better raw data usually, but not always, produces a "better" image (whatever that means). What percentage of image quality is due to the data versus the processor, is a question that all of us have an opinion on. My opinion is that it is mostly due to the skill of the processor. Although I do love fine data from a dark site. So where am I going with all this rambling? Here is my modest proposal. ELIMINATE THE IOTD. ELIMINATE THE ASTROBIN LEADERBOARD. You were not expecting that were you. Here is my reasoning. I am guessing that much (if not most) of the contrary feelings about this issue come from the fact that a small number of individuals are rewarded with ratings and IOTD rewards for images that most of the people on Astrobin feel they could never achieve. Another belief is that others have an unfair advantage with their setup, their access to remote data or their use of professional data. Therefore, if you eliminate the obvious "trophy" you will eliminate a good part of those hard feelings. And I think we can all live without getting an IOTD or a Leaderboard ranking. Let me put it another way, isn't it enough that people say they "like" our images? Or even better, make complimentary comments about them. Do we need to get the secondary affirmation of an award, rating or ranking? Don't the images speak for themselves? Don't you just enjoy your images for what they are, "art." Isn't that the pure joy of this hobby? All that being said, and to quote Dennis Miller, "That's just my opinion. I could be wrong." Eric ;-) |
11.57
#... |
|---|
|
Hi, I think one way to view this is to ask what do you want to achieve with IOTD? Do you want to acknowledge the best images? Or do you want to acknowledge the best effort made by the ones who upload the images? Personally, I feel that NASA APOD is making an attempt to acknowledge the best images, regardless whether the submitter made a great effort. That's an example of the former case. For the latter case, one can argue that there is less effort involved in amateur images based on data from large-telescope (Hubble, Palomar, Subaru, VLT, etc) or commercial remote observatories. That's probably true. However, there still exist excellent amateur images based on large telescope data that require lot of efforts and skills to process. Even the observatory staff may not be able to create such beautiful images. I personally think such images deserve credits. Just my two cents. Cheers, Wei-Hao |
 #... |
|---|
| Eric, I've created a topic to discuss the IOTD, so let's talk about that there. Thanks! |
|
0.00
#... |
|---|
|
Hi As a new member of Astrobin I think, that both , own collected and processed Pictures and Images from professional Telescopes should be compared seperate. My wish would be to have the raw data from the professional Telescopes downloadable in this forum for an " Image procession of the month" so that everyone could show his creative procession, and as new member I know, that there is a lot remaining for me to learn, but I think, that a lot of member could take a positive result for themself, by comparing little different images from the same origin. On the other side, self collected pictures are effected from the sum of money that every one was able to spend and evenso effected from his own location, For me with a high light polluted location near Düsseldorf in Germany, not the best starting condition to win some flowers, sorry for my bad english. Bernd |
0.00
#... |
|---|
|
Ok everyone, I want to wind back a bit from my earlier post as since writing that I thought that I should at least take a look at what DSW has to offer. To my great surprise and pleasure I see that they offer free yes FREE downloads of data captured by the DSW team. That is a great resource and since I currently do not have the capability to capture CCD mono data (I'm strictly DSLR with my own equipment), I thought that I'd take a peak and give it a try. Oh boy did that show me just haw far away are my processing skills from others (e.g. Paddy, Barry, Lloyd, etc.) that have posted their image versions from the same data (Bernd I think that this is exactly what you requested in an earlier post...). What is clear is that access to at least some of this (DSW) data is open to all and consequently all may therefore assess their own processing performance against this baseline data in comparison with others who indeed are sometimes IOTD winners and often high on the AB index / Leaderboard. This therefore significantly changes my opinion about such images being included in IOTD as I absolutely do want to see the results of the best processing, so that I may learn from the experts, which clearly I am not. I will still prefer to capture and process my own data, but as I think many have commented, it the skill in data processing that really reveals the quality of the final image. Cheers, Geof |
0.00
#... |
|---|
Luca Billeri: I tottaly agree with Luca´s point of view ! |
|
0.00
#... |
|---|
Conrado Serodio:Luca Billeri: Indeed!! |
|
0.00
#... |
|---|
|
This entire question and discussion simplifies astrophotography into little more than a competitive activity. I strongly dislike this. This is not why I do AP, and I suspect this is the same for many others. The unfortunate truth is that that IOTD has become the contentious focal point of Astrobin. I would like to see the competitive and social media aspects of this site go away (ie, "likes" and "followers" ) I think the aspects where people directly communicate are fine (comments and forum). Let the art stand on its own and let each person decide for themselves what appeals to them. Beyond that we should come together as a group to educate and inspire each other, not compete for meaningless awards generated by likes that can easily be solicited. |
|
0.00
#... |
|---|
|
It's a shame that people don't win prizes for "data acquisition." I am personally new to the WHOLE field of astrophotography, from the telescope / camera / setup side to the post-processing. It's all new to me. I live in one of the most heavily light polluted locations in the world, the 25 million population city of Seoul, South Korea. I live in the city center (a MASSIVE 9 on the Bortle Scale). So my struggle is not just with setting up, guiding and acquiring, but it's also in dealing with the light pollution. So my investment into my equipment has been considerable (relatively speaking) as I am not a wealthy individual (still working on that part). Therefore, to me, the post-processing is only half of the picture. My images are really not all that great compared to many of the images I have seen on this site. But when i create an image from the data I have acquired given all of the difficulties and limitations of my location and equipment, it gives me greater satisfaction. In all honesty I used to get pretty frustrated when I would see someone get Image of the Day from some Hubble data that they threw into Photoshop and did some stretching on. I know it is a bit more complicated than that, but that is what I would think. Especially since the first 6 months or so of my learning curve was really spending thousands of dollars on equipment that I had no idea how to use and trying to figure out things like guiding, PEC, light pollution removal and spending hours and hours on something that would NEVER win an IoD. But let me be clear, I'm not in this for getting an IoD. I like the science of this. I like the fact that I am using my OWN equipment to capture images of things that are thousands of light years away. I like the fact that the people that I really respect on this site and others, are capturing their own data, post processing it, and producing images that rival anything NASA is putting out. [cudos to you guys, you know who you are ;) ] Having said all that, I definitely see a place for post-processing data that you download. So I am not opposed to seeing images of Hubble data that someone downloaded because they usually look pretty amazing. I'm just not in favor of those images getting IoD's. Since the "spirit" of this site is as an AMATEUR astrophotography website, it stands to reason that IoD's should be reserved for those that go through the gamut and acquire their own data. If this was a standard photography contest, I'm pretty sure you would only be able to submit your own photographs (not Mr. Hubble's that you simply post-processed). My 2.5 cents. |
0.00
#... |
|---|
| Jason, your images are remarkable for the city centre and deserve to be the IOTD for the efforts you put. Having said this, you will restrict the hobby for a few targets or for a few persons able to travel a lot to dark site or for a few lucky ones living there. I think all astro-images deserve a place in astrobin. I think for the much contested IOTD the simple rule that you should own the data would suffice for most intents and purposes. Obviously Hubble images would not qualify |
|
11.57
#... |
|---|
Mark: Hey! It's not totally impossible that someone here actually wrote a telescope proposal, submitted it to Space Telescope Institute (or whatever large observatory), got to use Hubble for his/her own target, and then owns the data for whatever period allowed by Hubble. This is rare in the amateur community, but not impossible. |
|
0.00
#... |
|---|
| OK, yes, I see. The last thing this person might have in mind is to submit it to IOTD. They have other motivation factors in mind e.g. scientific paper etc. |
|
11.57
#... |
|---|
| Most scientists working in astronomy agree that public outreach is extremely important. The great public support to Hubble once got a NASA director fired, after that director decided not to service Hubble any more. This saved Hubble and gave Hubble several more years of lifetime, and this eventually allowed astronomers to write more science papers and discover more interesting things about our universe. As long as their data can be made into pretty pictures and shared with the public, most of them will say yes, and quite a few of them are willing to do it by themselves. They may never bother to "submit" such pictures to APOD or IOTD here, but it is not impossible to see such images uploaded to public space like astrobin. |
|
0.00
#... |
|---|
|
Wei-Hao, while it may not be completely impossible it is so highly unlikely as to be consider impossible. I have the pleasure of knowing quite a few professional astronomers and scientists, living only a few miles from NASA's JPL, and none of them have heard of Astrobin or Cloudy Nights or are even aware, with very few exceptions, of the hundreds of amateur astronomers who shoot from their backyards right here in LA. We simply don't move in the same worlds. And the things they care about are science and the expansion of human understanding of the universe, not pretty pictures, social accolades and inter web awards. |
 #... |
|---|
Luca Billeri: Exactly. Same with Paddy's example. Buying your way into a club that uses 20k cameras tied to 20k telescopes on 20k mounts puts you outside the realm of your average person. While I have an observatory (a shed), I don't even come close to that level of sophistication. I guess it depends on who you want to cater to, your average people or the '1%' to use another term popular in the United States. I think you'll see a greater return if you remove the 1% from the equation. |
0.00
#... |
|---|
|
I understand if somebody gets the raw data from hubble and tries to process this image. It is comprehensible and interessting to the the different results from the same data, but maybe this images should not be able to become the IOTD. <Garbage output> What I can not understand are these "remote imagers": Is there any assurance that the images in a FTP from a particuar night really taken on that night? It would be very easy to copy files from six month ago with the same equipment to your folder and rename them, change the FITS header and you are done. It makes fraud easy and maybe there are people out there, who paid for imaging time and get data which was already token. Has anyone ever thought of it? On the other side, you could combine data from all the people to create images with really large exposure times like the 212h orion wide field I saw yesterday. </ Garbage output end> I apologize for having disappointed Salvatore. |
#... |
|---|
Felix: Wow, that's a whole new level of lack of faith in the human species, there. |
|
0.00
#... |
|---|
Wes Chilton: I agree. I have recently started to use Astrobin simply because it is a very well thought-out archive site for astro images. I am a professional scientist (not in astronomy) and my life is dominated by 'likes' (paper citations) and 'followers' (invitations to be on grant proposals). I guess many professionals could make similar arguments and I was kind of hoping that my hobby wouldn't get embroiled in metrics. I dont expect these will go away, and so I now mentally compartmentalize this side of astrobin.... |
0.00
#... |
|---|
|
This is an interesting conversation to say the least and there is likely never going to be total agreement. That being said, I'll offer my opinion having been both a backyarder and a remote imager, and a current operator of a remote observatory (DSW). I think there are key questions to think about before segregating imagers and images into pro / am or remote / local or any other categories. Pardon my lack of brevity...I'm no Mark Twain. So, I offer a one paragraph summary of my opinion on the issue. The super summary of what I'm about to say is I believe all terrestrially acquired data should be evaluated together: should be considered for IOTD, should be in the same category of any other image acquired from anywhere on Earth through whatever instruments are available to any amateur imager. This includes remote observatories, backyard observatories, manual and robotic acquisition, single user, and shared systems. I also believe that those who judge the images should be trusted to take into account all the variables involved before making an IOTD declaration. As imager / voters, we should vote with our own criteria. I am a remote imager. Let me be completely transparent and say I do get a thrill when one of my images is selected as IOTD. I've had this honor ~15 times. Not all IOTD images were acquired from a remote observatory, but most were. I value the collective peer review that what I did worked out well. I value just as highly any actionable feedback which is unfortunately very rare (special thanks to Dieter333 who gave me useful feedback just today on the oft' imaged M45). Some view this as competitive and perhaps it is more so for some than others. But as long as there is a judgement being made there will be a winner and some not-winners. And, there will be some who agree with the criteria and some who do not. It's the nature of the beast and few of us should be surprised by this. I suspect there are many imagers who use Astrobin as a "photo album"...my Mom loves it. I also suspect that there's a fair proportion who submit images in the hopes that it will be selected as IOTD, but feel uncomfortable saying so. I fall into both categories and am comfortable in the hope that one of my images gets selected. If an image is not selected then I move on and hope for more clear skies. The way I look at it astrophotography requires mastery of 2 primary disciplines and one is slightly more important than the other: data acquisition and data processing. Acquisition is a function of many things including skill, equipment, location, technique, etc. Processing creates the image which is the end result of it all. As such it is my belief that processing is a hair more important than acquisition. We've all seen imagers like J-P Metsavainio who make beautiful images with limited, even marginal data. Many of us recall the first time we saw what Jerry Lodriguss could do with film from the outskirts of Philadephia... They acquire, but THEY PROCESS. All due respect to members of DSW, but I know first hand that having great data from a remote site DOES NOT overcome lack of processing ability / experience. This is where I'm supposed to say that I'm not a judge of what is or isn't a good image....but I'm not going to bail out. I've seen some good images, but also some horrendous stuff from DSW data. I believe most would agree if we were looking at the same image. It is from this perspective that I conclude that acquisition type, style, location, approach is kind of a "smoke screen". If you can't process, you can't produce a great image. Questions that come to mind... - Some imagers can afford the best of equipment while others cannot. Should their result be segregated by the value of the imaging equipment used? - Some imagers use DSLRs and others CCD cameras. Should these be separated because one is different or better than the other? - Some imagers use freeware to process while others use the latest tools on the best computers and displays. Should their result be segregated by tools and systems used? - Some imagers live in near perpetual poor skies and others do not. Should their results be segregated by whether or not they have favorable weather? These questions devolve into absurdity pretty quickly. If acquisition is the key then amateur telescope makers are the "most pure". Or, maybe it's those who figure lenses and mirrors themselves, or make the glass :-). I wonder if in years past if imagers argued that CCD imaging was less pure than film? Or, if autoguiding did not exemplify the hobby because it eliminated the "suffering" of manual guiding? Remote observatories attempt to eliminate some of the things that hold us back as imagers. Isn't that a good thing much like film to CCD, achromats to APOs, and illuminated reticule eyepieces to autoguiders? As a matter of course remote observatories relegate acquisition to the background. Initially, however, when locating a telescope to a remote observatory your COMPLETE attention is on acquisition. Going remote forces imagers to be 'expert' at acquisition. Perhaps remote imaging is the highest exemplar of the art of acquisition. It carries the most risk and the highest level of difficulty. Looked at from a positive perspective, how amazing is it that we have the technology to operate telescopes from anywhere in the world? That we are no longer victims of local weather and light pollution? That we can actually make all that "stuff" work without the ability to even touch it, or in some cases even see it. Those who have mastered automated imaging and work under great skies will have a better chance at a great image than those who haven't and don't...but it is far from a guarantee. Data acquisition is a key point in this discussion: if you acquired the data yourself then somehow it is a more "pure" practice of the hobby. If you did not do the acquisition then somehow it is less pure and is not truly practicing the entirety of the art. Or maybe it is "not pure" if the imager did not "suffer" under poor skies, cold, or around bugs, critters, and teenagers in heat on Angel Point. I believe the majority of us want to create the best images possible. In that attempt we get the best equipment we can, put it in the best locations we can, and we practice. And hopefully we get good constructive feedback and we practice more on the main difference maker: processing. If our images are recognized by our peers then great. If not recognized or selected for some 'award' are you still happy with the hobby? If not then I wonder what that means? I believe the person(s) judging the images should make the final determination of IOTD based on what they believe is good relative to all other submissions that day. The criteria can and should be revealed to us who care (many) as well of those who don't care for the competitive aspect (also many). We as Astrobin users should trust that all considerations are made prior to selecting an image. Those of us who vote on imagers can use whatever criteria we believe are applicable. To my way of thinking any act of segregation is concerning given the potential lack of objectivity in the segregating criteria. More importantly, in the context of this conversation, some of the very things that can advance our hobby and the quality of our outputs are very nearly being portrayed as deleterious. -Lloyd |
0.00
#... |
|---|
|
I definitely think there should be two categories. I did process a couple of remotely acquired data from dark skies. I can tell you this much. It is not fair. I carry my 10" and all my gear on top of a mountain in the freezing cold to gather quality data spending the night there. I enjoy it. I could put my gear in NM and pay $5000 a year rent for a pier. It would probably be cheaper per hour of imaging. The question comes down to this. Are we photographers or processors? To compare, if you were a wedding photographer, can you send someone else to shoot your data, put the data through Lightroom and put your logo on it? It would be unethical. When I process remote or professional data I feel funny sharing it as my own. On the other hand I know people that feel like I am cheating because I use auto focus. |
0.00
#... |
|---|
|
Hello all, I've read a few of the posts here and they all have good points to make. I hope I can make mine too. As an absolute beginner - I'm talking, I went and bought a pair of 20X80 binos and stared at the sky for HOURS not having a clue what I was looking at, to purchasing my first real scope a few weeks later (an 8" Meade Model 2080 with the standard AltAz mount) and staring at the sky even more until FINALLY I figured out a few little things here and there and eventually put a camera on my scope and started trying to take pictures... I went from not having the slightest clue to, just at a year later, having a pretty nice setup that can produce some pretty nice images (I'm extremely fortunate to be on the 70-ish mile line from Houston, TX and am JUST outside the majority of it - I can (and have) imaged some pretty southerly items too!) and I can say that seeing a "Hubble Data" image get IOTD really feels like a blow to the esteem. On one hand, I know that I (and most other ground-based astronomers) could never compete with that image, so why should it get IOTD over someone else that put a bunch of effort into gathering their own data? On another hand, there are a few people on here that take Hubble Data images and process out tiny portions of fainter and lesser-known objects that produce another side of the hand where it's something so tiny or so faint that nothing on earth (aside from research-grade meter-scopes and the latest AO technologies) would even be able to have a chance at imaging it... Those are some really cool images and are well worthy of being shown alongside someone's "home-grown" work. It took time and effort to go and grab those tiny DSO's and process them and it just seems more deserving of IOTD than someone's "Hubble data M51" for the thousandth time. It sure brightens my day though when I see some "imperfect - backyard" image make it up there... It really gives me hope in knowing that I'm right there on the cusp of getting that type of data.. What I really need to do is to dedicate more time to the objects themselves (imaging), which I am starting to do, and to get better at processing. PixInsight is one of the GREATEST astrophotography tools I've ever used, and one of the most powerful too, but it takes a lot of learning to get it "right". My latest "Rosette Beginning" is probably the bare-minimum amount of subs I can take and produce a quality image, but I still have so much to learn on the processing side. My data is there - but I have some more learning to do. I guess as long as it keeps me hopeful that one day, some of my images might make it up there... That's all that really matters. It gives me something to push for on this site. That's all for now. -Gvnr |
|
0.00
#... |
|---|
It is not fair. Which part is not fair in your opinion? Fairness is evenhandedness, or unbiased with respect to an assessment or judgement. Therefore, to assert unfairness means that something is being compared and judged in a biased manner. So is the judgement of our images unfair or do certain data acquisition methods result in images that are not truly comparable? I'll assume the judges are fair since I have neither reason nor facts to believe or prove otherwise. So the unfairness must be that it is unreasonable to compare images acquired and processed by an individual versus those not acquired by an individual. As I asserted before there is no hew and cry when it comes to one imager having superior equipment, or superior processing tools and skills than another. Nor does anyone assert unfairness given an imager's geography--maybe they're lucky to live in the Atacama region or unlucky to live in Atlanta as I do. I can go to the tallest mountain in Georgia at the coldest time of year and I feel no better or "funnier" than if I acquired the data 2,000 miles away at my remote observatory while in the comfort of my home. Is that unfair? I believe we all have the right to do within our means anything we can do to create great amateur astrophotography. I also believe we all have a right to have our images adjudicated regardless of the means of acquisition. AstroBin voters, or anyone else assessing images can determine if they like them or not. A major concern seems to center around the acquisition process: Did you do it yourself? Were you standing next to the scope when it happened? Did you have some hardship in the process? Are you paying more per hour of imaging than you otherwise could? I believe it is absurd to assert that the answer to all these questions must be "yes" for the resulting image to be truly considered your own. I do believe space-based and other clearly professional instruments are an exception and have no place in an amateur forum which I believe AstroBin to be (NASA's APOD has no such limitation as far as I understand it). I'm really not trying to be obtuse. I get the point that is being made by some: unless you do everything from beginning to end then the image is not truly your own. I respectfully disagree and consider this to be an outmoded point of view. Some have neither the time, desire nor means to go to the mountaintops. Some don't even possess the equipment nor the acquisition skill. Hell, some of the best imagers in the world ONLY process data gathered on other's instruments. Should we discriminate against their images? Do they deserve the right be considered astro imagers? In the days of film did we somehow discredit the imager because they didn't actually use the chemicals to develop the film? Did we consider them to be less of an imager because they didn't do every step? A cheat even? To me it is clear that astro imaging is slightly biased towards processing than acquisition. As such, we should endeavor to get the best data we can and do our best to process it. To the wedding photographer example: Astro imagers in my opinion are data processors more so than data gatherers. In photography, the artist is behind the camera dealing with lighting, positioning, exposure, posing, depth of field, compositional weight, etc. In astrophotography being "behind the camera" is data acquisition which is predominantly mechanical and rote. Of course the astro imager also has to deal with framing, exposure and other things similar to terrestrial photography, but to a much lesser extent. Most targets are static, there is no posing, no "golden hour", no "blue hour", no candids, only occasionally are there one-time events. For the astro imager data integrity is stressed while artistic license is largely eschewed. In terrestrial photography it's nearly the opposite: artistic license is celebrated if not demanded. You should know that there are entire businesses devoted to post-processing professional terrestrial photographs. The originator of the photograph is a paid professional. The processors are paid service providers. The photographer is the artist. The processor is just that...a processor. I believe in astro imaging a case can be made that the importance of the roles are reversed and that the processor is the artist and the data acquirer is just managing systems... -Lloyd |
|
11.57
#... |
|---|
Lloyd: Well, even in terrestrial photography post processing can be part of the creativity. Just look at Ansel Adams' work and the "Zone System" he created. When he took pictures, he had already in mind how to process/print the images and he took the processing into account when he decided what film, aperture, shutter, and filter to use. Not that I disagree with what you tried to say. I just want to remind people that even outside astrophotography, processing can be an integral part of photography. |
