Poor old Damian Hirst.

[Gasman]

2 minutes ago, ChrisLX200 said:

No. I mean to use the tools available to clarify your vision of real celestial vistas, something that is out there which you could never see without the aid of the telescope and CCD camera. It should stimulate my imagination as to the vastness of space, I want to go there and the image should take me. An artist would imagine something and create it - real data is not required and the vision needs to reside nowhere other than in his/her mind.

ChrisH

But you and I could take an image of the same object using different equipment and different processing and come up with maybe similar looking images but who`s image is the correct one?.  The `personal` touch must come in somewhere!

[ChrisLX200]

8 minutes ago, Gasman said:

But you and I could take an image of the same object using different equipment and different processing and come up with maybe similar looking images but who`s image is the correct one?.  The `personal` touch must come in somewhere!

Which was exactly my point about 'presentation' above... that is what differentiates one astro-imagers output from anothers. Unless you're into inventing data then there can only be real features involved, but how these are displayed will differ.

ChrisH

[Gasman]

11 minutes ago, ChrisLX200 said:

Which was exactly my point about 'presentation' above... that is what differentiates one astro-imagers output from anothers. Unless you're into inventing data then there can only be real features involved, but how these are displayed will differ.

ChrisH

I just had another look at what the winner said about his image and it seems he pulled actual colours out of his video clip although out of focus they are actual images. I don`t think he claims to have made anything up just displayed it differently to how you or I might !

Steve

[cloudsweeper]

To sum up then - the astrophotographer uses a camera, telescope, and software to produce a beautiful representation of something.  Is that not admirable skill, rather than art?

Doug.

[Gasman]

I agree with you there Doug. Unquestionably a great deal of skill is involved producing the sort of images seen here on SGL. I too have all the gear but couldn't hope to imitate the images produced by you lot on here ?. I think the point of the original post was 'should it have won an astro competition' and much discussion followed. I think all imagery is personal and selective , you only have to look at the 'photo of the month' in the monthly astro mags, 2nd place might be a lovely image of some obscure nebula requiring 6hrs of Halpha then processed in Pixinsight whereas the winning image could be a snapshot of Aurora taken with a handheld camera, should the 2nd placed image have won because of the work involved in getting it? 

Regards

Steve

 

 

 

[Knight of Clear Skies]

I've been following the discussion with interest. Like many things, I think astrophotography straddles categories a little. Consider regular photography for a moment. At one extreme it's just record keeping, but while the photographer is working with whatever happens to be in front of them they have a number of artistic choices to make. What to frame, what to emphasize, when to press the shutter, what pictures to choose and what to discard. A photographer might wish to encapsulate action...

(Taken from this page.)

Capture mood...

(A famous picture "Migrant Mother", taken at the time of the depression.)

Inject a little humour...

Astrophotography straddles science, aesthetics and art, but where is the emphasis? Collection of data and interpretation is a scientific endeavour. Producing a pleasing astronomical image requires a strong aesthetic sense (aesthetics having a complicated relationship with art) married to strong technical skills. Craftsmanship is a good word for this process although it does differ somewhat from traditional craftsmanship, there being far less emphasis on manual dexterity.

The astrophotographer has far less scope to convey emotion than a regular photographer does, usually any emotional response is that of the viewer. But there are exceptions to this, consider this award winning image, The Arrow Missed the Heart:

The familiar image of an arrow and heart in an unfamiliar context. A cosmic coincidence served up this opportunity but the photographer had to recognise it.

Here's a couple of my modest attempts at producing astronomical images at the more artistic end of the spectrum:

By placing the familiar Moon in frame I'm trying to convey something of the vast scale of the universe. The execution isn't great but I think the idea is sound.

Here's another, The Milky Way and Hurlers, a stone circle on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall.

Here's I'm trying to capture something of how our ancestors experienced the night sky, in a world free of light pollution it would have been far more prominent in their lives. What they made of it is a mystery, but I see the stone circle as an attempt to find and impose order on their world.

Technically, again, there are problems with the image. I had to compromise with the framing of the Milky Way and the stones, the third which helps make an arc is lost in the background. The light painting is too harsh and the LP low on the horizon is undesirable, a better photographer would have made more of it.

[Scott]

6 hours ago, Gasman said:

I agree with you there Doug. Unquestionably a great deal of skill is involved producing the sort of images seen here on SGL. I too have all the gear but couldn't hope to imitate the images produced by you lot on here ?. I think the point of the original post was 'should it have won an astro competition' and much discussion followed. I think all imagery is personal and selective , you only have to look at the 'photo of the month' in the monthly astro mags, 2nd place might be a lovely image of some obscure nebula requiring 6hrs of Halpha then processed in Pixinsight whereas the winning image could be a snapshot of Aurora taken with a handheld camera, should the 2nd placed image have won because of the work involved in getting it? 

Regards

Steve

 

 

 

I think the point of the origional post was that it most definately should not have won, not whether or not

 

[ollypenrice]

My point in starting the thread was to invite an open discussion on what astrophotography is all about. I confess to setting this in a context of conceptual art because I felt that the winning image was produced in that spirit. (Note that it had a title as part of the image. This is common in works of cenceptual art since the 'concept' in question needs to be put on the table. And, no, I don't think much of it as a genre. )

It's been a great dsicussion, I think, on the art-craft side of things. What about the science side? Some diehards would have it that a non linear image has no scientific value whatever. I think this is nonsense. After all, non linearity is only a barrier to photometry and photometry is not the beginning and end of astronomical science. But before going on I want to suggest two ways of defining scientific value.

1) Contribution to breaking science. This is rare in amateur imaging but new discoveries are occasionally made. Soap Bubble, IFN, Squid, R Jay GaBany's  tidal extensions and others.

2) Scientific validity. If a science teacher runs a classic lab experiment he or she is not contributing to breaking science because it has been done many times. But the repeated experiment has no more or less scientific validity than the original experiment. If an imager takes a carefully calibrated image of galaxy 'x' and finds that it is a barred spiral with two dominant arms and a tidal tail heading north west than that is scientifically valid as an observation. It does have these features. The first person to image these phenomena (assuming them not to be visible at the eyepiece) meets both my criteria, 1 and 2. The amateur imager coming along later meets only the second.

So breaking science is not the only kind of science. Science must be allowed to retain the integrity of its past and repeatability is one of the keynotes of observational science.

Olly

 

[swamp thing]

On 24 September 2016 at 21:40, ollypenrice said:

The funny thing here is that it seems to me that we agree far more than we disagree. It all hinges on this phrase of yours. 'Your image is an interpretation of what exists out there in the cosmos. The object is out there, but it is you as imagers that interprets it. This interpretation results in the image which is art.' I don't entirely agree that is what we do. Think of an archaeologist excavating an Etruscan vase. He teases out the pieces, damaged and distorted by time and by the medium in which the vase has resided for centuries. He reassembles it in his best attempt to present it as it was when buried in the soil. But he is not the Etruscan artist. He is a crafstman skilled in restoration. In my view I am not an artist. Nature is the artist who created M42. I am just the archaeologist working with the results of ancient light falling on my camera.

 

Olly

It is my opinion that the restorer is indeed a craftsman, The reason is, he is restoring the actual object.
As an imager you are creating an interpretation of M42 you are not working on the actual object, and to me this interpretation is art not craft. By it's very nature your image is an interpretation of an object. Not the actual object itself, therefore to me it has to be art. There is craft in it perhaps in the same way that an artist knows brush craft but he is not a craftsman, he is an artist. To me there is no crafting in photoshopping but there is certainly an art to it. 
One does not call an excellent image the product of great craftsmanship, it is a work of art. I feel we are never going to agree on this matter though  

To me the person that made the vase is also open for debate. Personally I would call them a craftsman or artisan not an artist but hey ho we have gone far enough off topic  

 

[Gasman]

I suspect an identical discussion would be happening right now over on some arty forum if an astronomer had been asked to judge an art competition .

As I`m not an imager it would be interesting to know what constitutes a `perfect` image (if indeed one exists)? Surely an astro imager patiently exposes for however long he/she thinks to bring out as much detail as possible of the object but who`s to say instead of exposing for say 5hrs then maybe exposing for another 30mins (40,50?) would bring out just a touch more detail?. The Photoshop experts among us - how about a little bit more red here, a bit less blue there maybe a touch more Halpha etc etc and so on?. Sorry for ranting on about this `personal touch` but I can`t see how you can produce an image without putting your own personal stamp on it. 

So have we been `creative ` in producing this image or, dare I say artistic!! ? 

cheers

Steve

[ollypenrice]

1 hour ago, Gasman said:

I suspect an identical discussion would be happening right now over on some arty forum if an astronomer had been asked to judge an art competition .

As I`m not an imager it would be interesting to know what constitutes a `perfect` image (if indeed one exists)? Surely an astro imager patiently exposes for however long he/she thinks to bring out as much detail as possible of the object but who`s to say instead of exposing for say 5hrs then maybe exposing for another 30mins (40,50?) would bring out just a touch more detail?. The Photoshop experts among us - how about a little bit more red here, a bit less blue there maybe a touch more Halpha etc etc and so on?. Sorry for ranting on about this `personal touch` but I can`t see how you can produce an image without putting your own personal stamp on it. 

So have we been `creative ` in producing this image or, dare I say artistic!! ? 

cheers

Steve

I think you are prefectly correct. The imager does put his or her stamp on the image and, as imaging stands, it would be a bad thing if it were otherwise.

What would be the perfect image? That's a harder question to discuss than I'd anticipated because I've just scratched my initial answer! You might think that it would be an image coming from technology which eradicated the effects of the atmosphere, bypassed the Dawes limit of resolution and delivered a perfect representation of light intensity and wavelength (hence colour) landing on the chip.  But it would be a lousy image if it weren't stretched. It would show even less than present linear images show because it would not even show the stars other than as pixels (and the pixels in question would be infinitely small!) There would be a bit of nebulsoity sometimes and that would be your lot! So we do need to modify the histogram in order to see anything interesting.  When we do that we, ah... intervene ... and when we do that we are in the picture. On the other hand it might need only a pure and global log stretch to give an excellent result.

Are we in there as artists, craftsmen, scientists, interpreters or something else? Because we don't invent the primary content of the image I still don't think artist is the right word to describe the bulk of it, but it is certainly in there. 

Olly

[Gasman]

I agree with you there Olly!. It would be interesting to know the prerequisites for the RGO images. For instance take the winning image, could you see that image from your garden? Well no and perhaps yes also with a bit jiggery pokery with an image processing package, could you go out in the garden and see the runner up image too ?. Again I'd have to say yes and no! No because its too faint to see without much processing and also Yes because it took 120x6min exposures,a 10inch scope, good mount and CCD and again processing to see it!.

I'm interested in Spectroscopy and with the image processing its so easy to over do it and introduce artifacts that shouldn't be there and affect the final spectra.

Regards

Steve

[Stub Mandrel]

Hmm... two Hubble shots - the Pillars of Creation and the 100,000 galaxies in a speck of sky.

Both clearly manipulated images. Both excellent science. Both changed the way I and many other people look at the universe.

Is it art of science? You might as well ask the same question of a John Audobon print.