Starship Asterisk*

I am troubled by the publishing of a composite photograph of the lunar eclipse. It seems important to me to "preserve the phenomena" - so that when beginners look for what to expect, they are not disappointed by what they see with their eyes.

"The engaging composite picture was made by combining a filtered, telephoto image of the Moon and surrounding starfield with a telescopic exposure."

At no time did the eclipse look like this photo. I photographed the eclipse as well, but what I will most remember about this eclipse, was the sublime view of the copper colored moon among the stars with Saturn near by seen with the unaided eye. I just don't think there is any reason for misrepresenting the scene by combining images.

Some years back, Sky & Telescope published a multiple exposure photo of an annular eclipse, if I remember properly, and the images of the sun were about 15 or 20 degrees above a picturesque farm. It was a striking photograph. The only thing was, that in real life the sun was 50 or 60 degrees higher in the sky. What was the purpose of moving the sun?

It might be interesting to note for some readers here, that photographers for newspapers have VERY strict guidelines about any kind of image manipulation. Photographs may not be made from multiple parts of images - photographers in the last year or two have been fired for manipulating images. Why does this matter? Because it is a very slippery slope - if you start with a "little bit" of manipulation, then when and where do you stop? The credibility of not only photography itself, but of the publications that use these images is at stake.

This APOD image caption clearly states what sort of editing is done. No problem here for me. Aesthetics is reason enough to feature on a photo gallery site as APOD, even when the angle is a news event.

mistercrisp wrote:photographers for newspapers have VERY strict guidelines about any kind of image manipulation.

Yet reputable agencies as Reuters and AP are caught (often by bloggers) in the act over and over again, selling fake for the real deal, for all four kinds of photographic fraud (1. Digitally manipulating images after the photographs have been taken; 2. Photographing staged scenes and presenting the images as if they were of authentic spontaneous news events; 3. Photographers themselves staging scenes or moving objects, and presenting photos of the set-ups as if they were naturally occurring; 4. Giving false or misleading captions to otherwise real photos that were taken at a different time or place).

mistercrisp wrote:I am troubled by the publishing of a composite photograph of the lunar eclipse. It seems important to me to "preserve the phenomena" - so that when beginners look for what to expect, they are not disappointed by what they see with their eyes.

I don't think many people trek outside "to see" a lunar eclipse; rather they do it "to experience" a lunar eclipse.

We go to APOD to see things that we otherwise could not see even if we lived far from city lights and owned our own telescopes.

mistercrisp wrote:At no time did the eclipse look like this photo. I photographed the eclipse as well, but what I will most remember about this eclipse, was the sublime view of the copper colored moon among the stars with Saturn near by seen with the unaided eye. I just don't think there is any reason for misrepresenting the scene by combining images.

Aside from the fact that the long exposure picked up the glow in the sky around the moon that wasn't obvious to the naked eye, that picture looks very much like what I saw. A shorter exposure to properly expose the moon doesn't catch the fainter background stars that are visible to the eye due to it's superior dynamic range. Here's one I got:

Image manipulation is relative to the subject and matter. If the image has historic or legal witness aspects... Of course, it has to be untampered.

If an image has artistic or scientific out-of-our-visual-range-information... it makes for a more interesting subject (subjectivly of course) to do some technical tampering.

I expect most people viewing APOD realize there are a lot of "tampered" images taking us outside the normal human visual range.

It is a matter of perspective and perception... sometimes they can be out-of-sync in the beholder. Context is key.