Starship Asterisk*

geckzilla wrote:what's dubious about it?

Mostly, I am dubious that an astrophotographer can make any
sort of living without playing fast & loose with the facts. And
I am especially dubious that an astrophotographer can make a living now
that he is forced to compete with the Wally Pacholka's of the world who
claim an extra degree of legitimacy simply by the number of APODs granted.

Wally goes out and freezes his butt off taking thousands of photos
which he then ships off to a professional photo processing outfit.

Wally will not put out any final montage that doesn't look spectacular
& that almost anyone would be proud to hang over their mantel place.

But why shouldn't Wally be held to some
minimum standard in truth of advertising?

I'm sure Wally is a wonderful guy who performs a valuable service.
Like the manned space program & pulp science fiction media
Wally gets a lot of non scientists interested in Astronomy.

But as someone addicted to the beauty of real science
I am not impressed by any of it.

neufer wrote:But as someone addicted to the beauty of real science I am not impressed by any of it.

I don't care for most of his images, either. But that's an aesthetic choice; I don't think there's anything ethically dubious about them. They show what they purport to show, processed to bring out features (real features!) that might not otherwise be obvious to the eye. That's exactly what scientific astroimages do, as well. It's just that when you include familiar terrestrial objects in your image, the extent of processing is much more apparent- even if the exact details of that processing aren't necessarily known. There is no claim that his images are "scientific" in any rigorous sense; they are clearly intended first and foremost as art. And since there's no evidence that any of the data is being fabricated, I don't see what's wrong with including such images occasionally in APOD.

People are more prepared to accept a colorful HST image of a nebula as "real" (even though such a thing could never be seen by the eye) than they are a terrestrial landscape/starscape that clearly looks like nothing they have ever seen.

Chris Peterson wrote:

neufer wrote:Can you identify a single asterism in the entire "photo"

I don't know about any asterisms. I see lots of recognizable stuff right where I expect it. You can't miss the Beehive cluster (M44) above Mars, sitting right in the middle of the little triangle made by gamma, delta, and eta Cancer (eta is just off the image at top). Below and to the left of Mars kappa and lambda Leo are very obvious. In the center, just above the fog, the head of Hydra is clearly seen (eta, delta, epsilon, rho, and zeta Hydra). Straight above the area between the two exposed peaks you can see the faint smudge of M48, another open cluster. Everything is right where it ought to be for the time and place.

The reason it can be fairly difficult to pick out constellations and asterisms in Wally's images is because he really flattens the contrast of his skies. As a result, there is only a little apparent difference in star brightnesses, even where the stars themselves are actually several magnitudes different.

OK. From what you & geckzilla have provided I can see that the two stars near Mars are probably κ Leo & HD 81058 (and it is probably Jan. 21 when the moon was a little fuller). As you say, the contrast flattening really throws one off so a constellation map such as geckzilla kindly provided helps a lot.

Chris Peterson wrote:

neufer wrote:And you know this because... you have been assured of same by the folks who do the photo-shopping on Wally's photo's?

I've looked closely at a lot of his images and never found anything "unphysical"; that is, all the objects are real and where they ought to be. In this particular case, I don't think we are looking at a composite simply because I've taken numerous similar images, and know that this is what a single exposure looks like. The stars are a little sharp for an untracked image, so it's possible that the sky was composited onto the foreground. If so, there's nothing wrong with that, since the image would still just show what was actually present. But my impression is that this is a single exposure.

Yes, I think my main problem with Wally's works is all the heavy processing
along with those surreal foregrounds ...and ever that persistent little asterism: ®

I'm curious about your claim about Wally's image processing is "heavy", neufer. How familiar are you with Photoshop or with any other digital imagery processing programs? It's true that it's hard to say what exact processing is done to most of Wally's photos but I can't help but think you are unfairly weighing your opinion on the idea that they are processed in a way that is deceptive. You've indicated that you think bits and pieces of photos have been placed together like some kind of covert collage but I have yet to find evidence of this. He readily admits it to stitching panoramas together, which is a very common practice for panoramas and is not deceptive. I would be surprised if this particular photo had more than a few very simple adjustments done to it, such as curves and saturation adjustments, noise reduction filter, and a sharpening mask. These sorts of adjustments are so common that nearly every digital photographer uses them.

geckzilla wrote:I'm curious about your claim about Wally's image processing is "heavy", neufer.

Well, for one thing, I already posted a less heavily processed image of same:
http://asterisk.apod.com/vie ... ly#p114517

I also included a glowing review from Emily Lakdawalla with no personal comments atall from yours truly.

geckzilla wrote:It's true that it's hard to say what exact processing is done to most of Wally's photos but I can't help but think you are unfairly weighing your opinion on the idea that they are processed in a way that is deceptive.

Perhaps. In any event, I mostly chimed in to support of Indigo_Sunrise.

I support the eclectic variety of APOD images and in my official role as the Asterisk "Quotidian Quotationist" I try to learn & share something from each of them. But doing anything with Wally's stuff gives me a headache.

Bill Nye seems to be your pet peeve...let me have mine.

neufer wrote:

geckzilla wrote:I'm curious about your claim about Wally's image processing is "heavy", neufer.

Well, for one thing, I already posted a less heavily processed image of same:
http://asterisk.apod.com/vie ... ly#p114517

I also included a glowing review from Emily Lakdawalla with no personal comments atall from yours truly.

That you did, but I still think those are two separate exposures. There's no way that rock texture even made it into the first one while it's clearly visible in the APOD. And I actually like Bill Nye.

edit: Another thought is that the first one is actually more processed, or perhaps poorly processed and so details in dark areas were lost. But it's definitely not possible that that first one is completely unprocessed.

Mars and a Colorful Lunar Fog Bow (2010 Feb 02)

I like the fascinating picture of a bow in a caldera within a layer of fog. A Fog bow in the night with Mars shining in the clear layer of the sky is really cool.

Michael Pharo

Hi!

What a wonderful picture!!
Rainbows are magical because they seem to build a bridge between the sky and the earth, between the space which conceals our beliefs and ourselves.

Have a very good day

Céline