ollypenrice

Yes, another winner from Alexandra. Always top quality. Olly

Or, as the Bonzo Dog Do-Dah Band said of their own work, It's art with a capital F. Olly

The Emperor's New Clothes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor's_New_Clothes Olly

I don't think your point is about galaxies versus other targets: isn't more about natural colour imaging versus NB colour mapping? Olly

False dichotomy. This is bad photography and bad art (as Rembrandt said just a moment ago. 😁) Olly

The Art World appeared before me in a dream last night and, speaking in the voice of Rembrand Van Rijn, it said... Stop calling this art. It has nothing to do with us! Olly.

No, the point is that it won a competition calling itself, 'Astrophotographer of the Year.' Nobody wants to deny this person the right to experiment in whatever way they like and produce whatver image they like. The butt of the harsh criticism here is really the judging. Olly

That's crap as well! So, hey, their competition title says, in effect, WE decide who is the astrophotographer of the year. Well, listen up guys, you don't. Olly

😁 Yes, but not in my house. I can do nothing to stop E equaling MC squared in my house but I can stop that from being art. However, I have something not dissimilar here in which I pass my critical judgement on a more or less daily basis... 😮lly

Lest we forget, 'art' looks like this: Olly

Consider it a compliment to you wife! 😁lly

You're probably right but an SCT can focus outside the range in which it is diffraction limited. Olly

No, the term draughtsman predates the engineering use of the term and is, I insist, the right one. It is precisely the term you were looking for when you said, 'Drawer' (which does not exist) and is widely used in art history to describe artists like Leonardo da Vinci. My mother, who didn't have an engineering bone in her body, was a truly fine draughtsman. The term is not limited, in any way whatever, to what we might call 'technical drawing.' That is just one (and very recent) branch of draughtsmanship. At the other extreme a satirical cartoonist might be considered a great draughtsman. (Many are.) Olly

Beautiful draughtsman. She doesn't contain socks! 😁lly

Beat you to it!!!!!!! 🤣lly

As Andrew says, Because any 'artist' can say they are. And yes, they can be offered as art and so just be worthless art - of which there is no shortage. However, I wasn't making a point about art, I was deconstructing the phrase, 'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.' If taken literally this phrase must insist that the object itself contributes nothing. There are people who will defend this point - just as there are people who will argue that the earth is flat. They belong to a group generically known as... (insert your term of preference!) Of course he does! Tom is one of the best astrophotographers in the world and has done at least one image - his moon illusion composite - which quite openly strayed from what the camera gave. Fully declared, for sure.) New paragraph... Beware of 'easy art.' Having an idea (tilt my camera and take a snap) will never make good art. Nor will, Get a butcher to cut a beast in half and stick it in a tank or Take my unmade bed and stick it in a gallery or Walk around Norfolk with a plank on our heads or Just get a load of bricks delivered and let the delivery man put them on the floor. The glorious joke with this one was that the delivery men put them in a neat pile and the 'artist' had to intervene to make it a random pile. (All of these 'works of art' are factually true. They existed.) I once wrote a short story taking the mick out of conceptual art. If you're really bored just PM me and I'll send you a copy... 😁lly

Yup. Such competitions will rapidly turn themselves into exercises in gimmick-finding. Olly

I don't think there's any need to compare them with the Thought Police. They are no different from experts in any other field: they've looked into the subject, made discoveries, conducted both thought experiments and practical ones and so on. Like any other expert most will be happy to afford people the freedom to think the Earth is flat if they choose to do so. I agree with you that the phrase in question is PSB! I don't think it's entirely false since, when any work of art is observed, there is creative effort on the part of both the artist and the observer. There is also room for disagreement and personal preference. However, if beauty really were only in the eye of the beholder there would be no general agreement that Shakespeare's writing is more beautiful than a random slice from the phone book or that a Rembrandt is more beautiful than a brick wall. It would be fatuous to argue that Shakespeare really is no better than a random slice from the phone book but... there will always be people willing to do so. 🤣 Olly

You won't find many professionals in aesthetics who agree with this, however often it is repeated. If it were true, art would be impossible. Olly

I think it's a story you wrote, however! 😁 Olly

What story does it tell? Olly

Sorry, I think it's a mess. As a photo of Andromeda it's worth 6/10 at best and the gimmick with the stars may be art, but it's bad art and shows that the imager does not understand the effect he is trying to create. The reduction in star size towards the vanishing point is not wrong in principle but it should be accompanied by a reducing sharpness towards that vanishing point. What we have is the reverse, so the supposedly foreground stars are blurred and the more distant ones sharp, in painful visual conflict with what is intended. I'm not a fan of gimmicks in AP at the best of times but, done as badly as this, I really dislike them! Olly Edit: I come from a family of professional artists and am married to a professional painter. I react in similar vein to the gimmicky claptrap of 'conceptual' artists and hackers in half of cow carcasses! Hence my irritable reaction. Sorry, but there it is.

That makes sense. The problem with the filter as luminance for LRGB is that it will pass very little blue from reflection nebulae, just those wavelengths which happen to coincide with H beta and OIII. (OIII only passes the longest of the blue wavelengths anyway.) My limited experience of processing OSC CMOS data s that it is already thin on blue even with no filter. Olly

Yes, but if I say to you that the distance from my front door to my garden gate is six you're going to ask me 'six what?' and that's what we're trying to fathom. Olly

All I meant was, 'The value is 6, but 6 what?' Bottletopburly has offered what may be the answer in your case. Olly