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Often very beautiful, if not technically “ correct” I wonder if there is a bias against them in top pick judging.? Looking at the last thirty days the 500 or so images to receive a nomination, do not include a single starless nebula. Is it part of the judging criteria, is technical excellence judged by star size ? Thoughts? |
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Often very beautiful, if not technically “ correct” I wonder if there is a bias against them in top pick judging.? Im not a judge in anyway but I think traditionally astro photos have stars and thats what I think is probably (just guessing) part of the criteria.. but not sure honestly. Personally I like the stars in images even if they are substantially reduced. I do have a couple starless images that I found appealing and posted on my profile but again very far and few between. Thats just my thoughts. Dale |
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| Starless images aren't astronomical images as far as I am concerned and if there is a bias against them I'd have nothing to complain. |
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andrea tasselli: Interesting view, so you would advocate disqualifying them altogether and value technical correctness over aesthetics ? Does that also extend to the hyper saturated colour schemes or palettes too ? |
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Interesting view, so you would advocate disqualifying them altogether and value technical correctness over aesthetics ? Absolutely! |
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| https://welcome.astrobin.com/iotd#staff-guidelines Stars a mentioned as a criteria, so far as their quality is concerned. However there is nothing in there about starless images being bad. You will find that starless images are counter-cultural in astrophotography and tend not to do well in competitions, be it here or elsewhere. A select few make it if they are compelling enough: https://www.astrobin.com/kcxhz4/ |
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Starless images can be very fascinating, and very useful for showing faint nebulas. However, as far as I know, with existing star removal algorithms used by amateur astrophotographers, there are no guarantee that every star is cleanly removed and no guarantee that no non-stellar objects (like sharp and round nebula or galaxy features) are removed. There is also no guarantee that the filled pixels at the location of removed stars represent the real nebula or background behind the stars. Because of these, current amateur starless images do not accurately represent the true universe, even if such starless universe exists. If we consider such starless images astrophotography, then we should equally consider images with arbitrarily added stars astrophotography, because they are equally inaccurate and equally artificial. Should we consider images with arbitrarily added stars astronomical images? Don't get me wrong. I love starless images. I very often create starless images, and sometimes upload them here as a revision. I also enjoy seeing other people's starless images. Many of them are really fascinating. I just don't think they are astronomical images. They are very nice art creations developed from true astronomical images. All that being said, if you like starless images, create and upload them here by all means. I think people will enjoy them like I do. Don't let the TP or IOTD thing dictate how you enjoy this hobby. Although I don't think starless images are astronomical images, that doesn't stop me from creating them. You shouldn't be stopped either. |
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| Thank you, a lovely, well thought out and thought provoking response 😀 |
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Wei-Hao Wang: I am generally in agreement with Wei-Hao's response. However, what is and is not an astronomical image tends to be subjective. The nonlinear subjective modifications we make during processing, I would argue, destroy the natural relationship between different areas of the object and the object and the sky. All the images here are artistic impressions of what we want to highlight and convey. In that sense, are starless images that different? It just becomes a matter of degree. |
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It's the culture formed in the society that leads us to consider certain types of images realistic representation of the actual world, while certain types of images not. It's culture, not strict science. Why do I say that? Because our eyes and brains are nonlinear. And we don't use that nonlinear nature to question whether we see is real. Furthermore, essentially all pictures we have seen since the invention of photography are nonlinear. We never use the nonlinear nature to argue that photographs are not realistic either. So the same standard applies to astrophotography. It's nonlinear, and being nonlinear alone does not affect its effectiveness in representing the real universe. Astrophotography is relatively young among all kinds of photography. Starless pictures are much younger. What I said about starless images is my opinion "now." I won't necessarily hold the same opinion in the future. We can certainly form our own culture through continuous debates, practicing, improving and evolving the starless techniques, and watching the general impact of AI on photography. After 20 years, astrophotographers then may say with higher confidence whether and why starless images are or are not astrophotography. Or maybe we don't care any more after 20 years? |
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Firstly Chris, I love starless images and your latest offering is a beautiful balance of colour and depth. Having said that I find myself wrestling with the cultural bias others have spoken of every time I create a starless image myself. I, like most of us I would guess, remove the stars to edit my nebulosity. And without exaggeration every time I come to add the stars back in to the image I worry that they distract from the carefully adjusted contrast and dynamic range in the nebulosity. That said, without at least the stars associated with the nebula itself, I can’t help feeling that there is something missing and that the whole story of the nebula is not being told. I feel like galaxy images are different, as the stars in our own galaxy are more like notes of dust on the lens than part of the galaxy’s Story. But of course this is all so subjective and I would encourage you to go on creating your own images in exactly whatever way you wish, without being concerned by what others think. I for one feel that Astrobin would be a far poor place without the starless images produced by yourself and others. |
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Wei-Hao Wang: I think this is a very reasonable position to take. To the original poster's question, getting stars to have the right shape, color, and balance with the subject takes skill in both acquisition and processing whereas it is relatively straightforward using today's tools to generate starless images and in fact many of us use such images as intermediate steps in our processing. Well acquired and processed stars add considerably to an image. It is this reason, I think, that starless images don't do too well, rather than a bias. It is just that there are better images of the same subject that do have stars in them. |
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Richard Rice: Hi Richard, I think you raise a key point here, one of context. In many cases the stars do add significant context and add value to the target. Imaging the star creation zone of Melotte 15 in the Heart Nebula, and leaving out the stars would be foolish. And yet I'm firmly of the opinion that there are some targets where they simply get in the way and make for a most noisy / clustered composition. Its been interesting reading some of these comments from the die hard technical "perfectionists" to the more aesthetic. I dont adhere to the principle that the images "must" or "must not" have stars. Ill just take them out if i think it makes my own personal image more appealing to me. The conversation has answered the initial question however. There is most definitely an anti starless bias. Thank you for your thoughts - eloquent and enlightening as ever. |
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Arun H:Wei-Hao Wang: Interesting point, but not one that resonates with me. Actually I think in comparison to nebula processing, stars are very simple to get right. Even grossly mishappen stars can now be fixed with Bluexterminator. A touch of saturation for colour distinction is all that needed. Typical examples of this site show 40+ hours of painstaking SHO data collection to capture fine detail and contrast, to which they add 30mins of RBG stars as an afterthought, but actually that's all a normal starfield needs. I dont accept a simple doctrine that stars in always equals better. In which case the huge disparity in recognition must be either a "technical" or "social" bias as outlined by the contributors above, or indeed part of the judging criteria as was pointed out. Thank you for your response, butu from my perspective the stars are the easy bit  |
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Even grossly mishappen stars can now be fixed with Bluexterminator This is very much NOT the case. |
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| I generally keep the stars in my images, but there are situations where with fine details and nebulosity, I do feel starless shows them better. In these situations, I dial back the size and number of stars by applying a far lower stretch to expose areas I do want exposed and also keep a sprinkle of stars and for the most part, I feel comfortable with the results. |
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andrea tasselli:Even grossly mishappen stars can now be fixed with Bluexterminator Actually it is very much the case unfortunately, as you can plainly see, to me using blurex is far worse in terms of an astronomical image than removing the stars   |
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| Frankly none of the example above are my idea of "fixing". Even the very middling case of astigmatic coma shown in the first frame shows residual tails in the form of "additional" stars. The other one is so bad and the scale so large that anything would work, even old fashioned maximum entropy. Which is why is so difficult and critical to get the field correction right and why good stellar images are critical for any proper astrophoto. After all the clue is in the name. |
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andrea tasselli: I have to completely agree with Andrea here. There is a clear mismatch, I think, in people's expectation of what acceptable star quality is. Where BlurX helps is if you are really close to having your optical train optimized. But you can't throw a garbage photo at BlurX, get some semi fixed stars, expect discerning viewers not to notice, then claim that they are biased against starless images. I have seen enough great photos of starfields to know that getting it right is a lot more than throwing the AI flavor of the day at an image. |
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andrea tasselli: “ fixing “ is in the eye of the beholder, you will concede I am sure however that they are vastly improved - the rest is semantics We are getting off topic however as I am interested in peoples biases in respect of deep sky Astrophotography. Yours are clearly as a result of aiming for as natural or technically correct image as possible, which I respect |
