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Steve Milne: Oh, I have done so...I know you do like to insult people and make fun about their lack of money and be forced to use not so expensive equipment or are not able to pay 500 bucks a month for hosting in a remote location, we've read your posts: Quotes by Steve Milne: 1) Great point. And agreed - these 'backyard' folks do appearto show a lack of …. commitment, if you ask me… 2) Maybe we shouldinstitute a new 'competition' Astrobin WOTD - Whinge Of The Day. We could award virtual badges, and maybe evenhave a Top Troll subcategory. The only one "whinging" around here is you - claiming it could not be done, not possible to distinguish and so on... If you need it so deperately for your ego - I (again) suggest go for an APOD which has much more prestige and be happy with that. Your Avatar very well expresses your character and what you think about all those people using their "small" equipment and/or driving out after work to collect data:  |
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| It seems there are really three groups of images, those processed from professional data, those processed from remotely and jointly owned equipment in dark sky observatories, backyard folk/everybody else. Although then you could argue that “everybody else” could be sub categorized into sky conditions, cost of equipment, etc, etc. When I look at the galleries of some posting here, they are littered with trophies and badges, but almost invariably those are the ones in the first two categories (except for Chris’s amazing backyard work), and I suspect if you include those in category two and Top Picks that the percentages chosen would be far higher than the 0.whatever% is quoted in this thread. That said if the truly best images were picked as IOTD and not just recognized as top picks, nearly every IOTD should go to those in the first two categories. So the judges clearly make great effort to include the backyard folk, despite the fact that their images may not be as good. That being said, I preferred the Olympics when they were “amateur” even though the games and performances may have been less stellar. And when I see a backyard imager, producing great work I know they are truly great imagers and processors. When I see great work from the first two categories, I suspect the same, but don’t know for sure. I have thousands of hours of exposure and processing from imaging over the last decade. I recently decided to try to process some Hubble data, and after ten minutes produced an image eons better that anything I have done over the years. Categories would be interesting to see. If nothing else, they would calm everybody down. |
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Here we go again. This seems to be a sensitive issue ... for Rodd. I don't know, can we have the stats for how many users have started such threads this year in order to infer something meaningful? Talking about stats, having 3 pro (big, pro owned telescopes like Hubble,Subaru etc.) IOTD during one month and nothing until the end of the year has the same statistical value as 1 image every 4 months. However, it does not have the same emotional impact. And if we are debating emotions, we won't get very far, because each of us believes his emotions are more genuine than the other's. I agree with Christoph that what should be taken into account is the personal mastery of both the acquisition and processing processes. However, I don't think that we should embrace exclusivism.Astrobin is not a site for " backyard astrophotographers"only (that would be sad). I tend to see Astrobin as a site for images produced by amateurs, some top class amateur processing of pro data can be reasonably accepted a few days out of 365. And IOTD rewards a beautiful and outstanding astronomical image, not the astrophotographer of the day. Clearly some people see this as a competition so they want to be treated "equally". The problem with this form of art or science is that no jury can isolate the photographer from the process and apply the ceteris paribus clause (all other things being equal). We have different skies, different cloud corverage (we didn't cover this, but that 's why some people go remote), different material, different life rythms. I am sorry, but it's not only the remote location under dark skies that's an advantage, Astrodon 3nm narrow band filters are already an advantage over others. Xordi tried to quantify this, at least it gives us something palpable, but I would not call pro anything that involves another person. If I decide to move my 115mm refractor to a clear sky and dark site, with my ASI 1600, is that going to become pro, because now it is installed on a concrete pier? I would say pro is what amateurs cannot own personnally. A 300-400mm scope is not pro. Full frame CCD is not pro (even when installed in Chile). When does a Planewave become pro after what diameter? There are observatories (I think it was in the US) that bought and installed RASA's and have C14 for observing and imaging, I am talking about Universities. C14 just became pro? 1m Rig yes, Pro. Officina Stellare, 30-50K scope pro. If I can think of a solution that keeps diversity, it has to be the judges and the selection process (which looks pretty balanced IMO so far). If the judges will put the bar higher for remote or comercial rigs it will be ok. They have to judge them differently in order to be "outstanding ". But ending up with aproximately good pictures as IOTD just because they are backyard under bad skies and photographer suffered at lot, is not reasonable. It is the image that has to be beautiful in the first place. And I'll always prefer an astonishing aurora or Milky Way over a medium quality deep sky image, even if you cannot compare the effort between the two. Finally it all comes down to finding out if there is a propensity to choose non-amateur images over amateur ones by the system that's actually in place. Bogdan |
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Michael S.:Steve Milne:Oh, I have done so...I know you do like to insult people and make fun about their lack of money and be forced to use not so expensive equipment or are not able to pay 500 bucks a month for hosting in a remote location, we've read your posts: Crikey, Michael. It’s sad that you’ve drawn these conclusions. I am sure that you’d come to a different opinion if only you took the time to get to know me. It’s especially dismaying that you were so distressed by my avatar, since I spent quite bit of time on that, trying to get the lighting ‘just so’. But what can I do? I’m just the way God made me. I think it was Schiller who said, “Meine beutelmaus hat Verstopfung” (apologies if I’ve mistranslated). I hope, at least, that we can all draw comfort from that. |
