M101 feedback

[ONIKKINEN]

Just now, vlaiv said:

I'm not sure I agree with this part.

How can person, observing an image of object for the first time - decide if something is real or not?

Imagine someone looking at the image of platypus for the first time - never hearing about the animal before.

Hairy thing with duck like beak and Interdigital webbing, come on, really? That's a thing and not photoshopped?

They cannot know what is real and what is not, and i agree its a big problem especially in astrophotography presented to the masses that dont know what something looks like. The most common offender is a purple and blue M31. Just google it and you see the issue with presenting it in a million different ways.

I try to keep realism in as far as it can be kept in my images and wouldnt dream of paintbrushing something away or making something blue that isnt, but also i realize that some people will do that and its none of my business to tell them they cant do that even if a part of me maybe wants to. I might say that im not a fan of it though, or just move on.

[Bibabutzemann]

57 minutes ago, powerlord said:

yup, correct. Same with starnet2++. As you say, each to their own.

But even if you stick to working with the data you have got  - I would  slightly moan about the use of the word 'natural' - as I don't really think it has any meaning here. 'natural' is that you don't see it at all after all ! There is a heck of a lot of data in there you are not using, especially in the core.I don't think the argument that it's natural to not show that detail stands up any more than it being natural TO show it. Both are equally wrong/right. Is it 'natural' if you take a photo inside looking out of a window that all you see is a white square ? that's what you recorded, but it's not 'natural'.. it's just what you recorded... your eyes see out the window fine. so maybe you HDR the image. It's just as much 'natural' then as before, because the word isn't really meanful imho. The definition of natural is yours alone really. So, in the end I'd argue your processing 'suffers' just as much of an artistic input as someone who tries to bring out every piece of data in their processing. One is no more 'natural' than the other imho. However it does seem to be a prevalent belief that it is the case for some reason in the astrophotography community.

stu

Well since we havent exactly defined what natural means, we could discuss about semantics to no end.

So im happy to abandon that word and simply say what i mean:

With natural i mean, that my picture shows what a gigantic telescope outside of earth would show to the human eye. 

I do sharpening, noise reduction and background extraction to reduce the optical effects caused by atmoshperic turbulence, light pollution, heat noise etc. because those things dont come from outside of earth.

Sometimes my pictures are less "natural" (in the sense i said above), when i want to focus more on bringing out certain details. Thats where Narrowband for example come into play.

But the data is still there, its still light gathered from outside of the earth. I dont want to add artificial data in post processing. Thats where i draw the line.

 

I also have huge joy, when i find quasars and galaxy groups in the background of my main object. For me its not just art. There is a fascinating story behind all those small dots you see in the background. And colours are important for me because they tell, if a object is maybe red shifter, or contains huge amount of young stars or old stars. If i understand the physics behind it, it makes the image ever more beautiful. 

 

Edited April 7, 2022 by Bibabutzemann

[vlaiv]

11 minutes ago, ONIKKINEN said:

I try to keep realism in as far as it can be kept in my images and wouldnt dream of paintbrushing something away or making something blue that isnt, but also i realize that some people will do that and its none of my business to tell them they cant do that even if a part of me maybe wants to. I might say that im not a fan of it though, or just move on.

I feel the same but do feel obliged to act in general best interest - like mentioning that there is certain level of responsibility to what people say, write and publish.

Don't see much harm in mentioning that something can be classified as Astro Art rather than Astro Photography?

[powerlord]

23 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

I would say that there are several things that will make image less natural.

1. Adding features or removing them

2. Changing of order of things - like if A >= B in brightness - I expect that to remain so in the image

3. I personally see color as being one of the things that should be kept as similar as possible to the real world.

Best judge of whether image is "natural" or not - should be, similar to measuring something (after all, taking image is form of measurement) - repeatability.

If many people shoot same galaxy and they all render a star or a feature in their images - then yes, that feature is there and it is natural to be shown in the image. Don't confuse poor measurement to "natural". If I shoot image from the inside and get white image or something - how is it different to taking image with too long exposure that saturates my sensor - or using ruler that is dirty enough so I can't read off correct number.

I would also like to add - that I don't object people being creative in their "photographs" - but I do object them being called photograph. Term it differently - term it "astro art" instead.

People in general are used to concept of photograph as being something realistic - depicting things as they are. When you take astro photo and then let your artistic side take over - you are doing disservice to the public by posting your work as astrophotography rather than astro art.

I'm with you on most of that, but the white bit - what I was saying is the data is there (in the core). you could choose to bring it out or not. One is no more natural than the other.

And I'm afraid the world has changed its definition of photograph in the last 30 years. Even 20 years ago, I was seem as someone who didn't really do real photography because I used photoshop. In the photography community, local clubs, etc. Now it is rare to find a photographer who does not use it, and thinks nothing of object removal, etc. I doubt you have laid eyes on a real 'photograph' in the last 10 years at least if that is your definition I'm afraid.

There is, imho nothing 'realistic' about taking 100s of photos with massively long exposures, using software to stack them stretch them and saturate them. If you want to go down that rabbit hole - I'd accept nothing other than a single exposure on celluloid film for an astrophotography 'photograph'.

Are Hubble's pictures astro-art ? I think they meet all your definitions for being so ?

I like the way this hobby has people who take it in different directions. I don't feel the need to label one way 'not astrophotography'. I don't think that is helpful. It reminds me of the sort of (sorry) snide remarks you used to get in hifi shops when they still existed when you went in to buy a turntable, but didn't have the budget for a 3000 quid thing.. you were somehow not worthy, or doing something which was 'not hifi'.

Let's please not go there ? We have folk on here doing NB in weird colours, starless images, heavily cartoony processed images (some of which seem to win competitions), and all sorts. They are all equally worthy of being called astrophotography in my eyes. And I hope most members ?

 

 

[david_taurus83]

Well, I'm one of the 8% of males that's red/green colour blind so I guess everything is false colour to me! 🙂

[powerlord]

4 minutes ago, Bibabutzemann said:

Well since we havent exactly defined what natural means, we could discuss about semantics to no end.

So im happy to abond that word and simply say what i mean:

With natural i mean, that my picture shows what a gigantic telescope outside of earth would show to the human eye. 

 

 

But that's just it isn't it - it isn't. Any more than a photograph of a street is. The human eye auto exposes whatever you look at. There is a good argument that an HDR picture is the best most accurate way of representing what the human eye sees for that reason.

So in your example, our space man would look at the core, their eyes would adjust and they would see the detail of the core (and out the corner of their eyes they'd see the rest of the galaxy go a lot dimmer. Then they might look at the arms of the galaxy, and they'd see in the corner of their eyes, the core whiting out.

The only truly 'natural' way to represent that in an image would be some sort of exposure layered image with an eye tracker, that change the exposure wherever your eyes were looking.

I know I'm being a bit silly, but hopefully you get my point - I think a better definition for what you like is 'my picture shows what a gigantic telescope outside of earth would show if you took a single image with a roll of amazing super sensitive film where it was exposed for general centre weighted exposure'. 

[vlaiv]

5 minutes ago, powerlord said:

There is, imho nothing 'realistic' about taking 100s of photos with massively long exposures, using software to stack them stretch them and saturate them. If you want to go down that rabbit hole - I'd accept nothing other than a single exposure on celluloid film for an astrophotography 'photograph'.

I guess this is where we disagree.

I don't see stacking images as nothing more then altering amount of light. Stacking is exact same thing as using one long exposure. It is just measurement process that does not alter nature of object we are imaging.

Stretch of data, if done properly is also "adopting" data to suit our vision. Photo sensors in our cameras see light differently than human vision system.

If we want to be strict - we would use Gamma of 2.2 when encoding our sRGB imaging - that is exactly defined level of stretch that is needed by standard. However, our eyes are dynamic in how they perceive light - we have iris that opens and closes to accommodate for level of light. Our displays are not capable of displaying dynamic range we are capable of seeing - even in "fixed" conditions (when our pupils don't change in size).

Stretch is therefore important part of circumventing this limitation of display system rather than anything else. Like someone mentioned - if we were floating in outer space - we would not have problem seeing faint arms of galaxy and detail in the core (although not at the same time - we would have to concentrate on both features - like seeing stuff in shade and broad daylight).

In my view saturation is actually bad and is done because we don't handle color properly in astrophotography. We calibrate our subs with flat field for example - and that is norm, while color calibration of our data is completely absent.

I have very long list of things that I think are good and things that are not something that I would do - and have very detailed reason for this or that, but I don't want to push my view on anyone.

Fact that we produce variety of renditions of the same object just shows that we don't really have complete control over imaging process. It can confuse people - we often hear question - "but how that object really looks like?". I don't mind people being creative - I would just be happier if there was clear distinction - that is why I mentioned Astro Art and measurement/repeatability as differentiator between natural and artistic.

It is ok for us to say - this is narrow band  / false color image, but we don't really want to say - this is Astro Art image when we utilize processing that changes the nature of object?

[vlaiv]

9 minutes ago, powerlord said:

The only truly 'natural' way to represent that in an image would be some sort of exposure layered image with an eye tracker, that change the exposure wherever your eyes were looking.

Well, adjusting stretch to do this for us is, I guess closest way to be done today without inventing anything.

[Bibabutzemann]

21 minutes ago, powerlord said:

But that's just it isn't it - it isn't. Any more than a photograph of a street is. The human eye auto exposes whatever you look at. There is a good argument that an HDR picture is the best most accurate way of representing what the human eye sees for that reason.

So in your example, our space man would look at the core, their eyes would adjust and they would see the detail of the core (and out the corner of their eyes they'd see the rest of the galaxy go a lot dimmer. Then they might look at the arms of the galaxy, and they'd see in the corner of their eyes, the core whiting out.

The only truly 'natural' way to represent that in an image would be some sort of exposure layered image with an eye tracker, that change the exposure wherever your eyes were looking.

I know I'm being a bit silly, but hopefully you get my point - I think a better definition for what you like is 'my picture shows what a gigantic telescope outside of earth would show if you took a single image with a roll of amazing super sensitive film where it was exposed for general centre weighted exposure'. 

Well i never said it is 100%. But it certainly comes closer to, than brushing away certain details. 

And instead of the eyetracker thing, you could just see it that way. If you would look at the background with the telescope, you would see all those small galaxies. In the image you should see it as well if you look at that part 😉

Edited April 7, 2022 by Bibabutzemann

[powerlord]

18 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

Well, adjusting stretch to do this for us is, I guess closest way to be done today without inventing anything.

exactly. 'HDR' if you like. thats all I'm saying. 👍

[powerlord]

16 minutes ago, Bibabutzemann said:

Well i never said it is 100%. But it certainly comes closer to, than brushing away certain details. 

And instead of the eyetracker thing, you could just see it that way. If you would look at the background with the telescope, you would see all those small galaxies. In the image you should see it as well if you look at that part 😉

Oh no, don't get me wrong I thought I was clear. sorry. I'm sort of playing devils advocate on the natural vs HDR is unnatural view. So in your example, sure all the wee galaxies should be there, but so should all the detail in the core rather than it just being a white blob - that's all I was trying to say. So you prefer the white blob rather than flattening the dynamic range into an HDR of the galaxy - I'm fine with  that - it's a preference. Just not more natural than seeing the HDR view is all I am saying.

I'm happy to sit outside of that when I start removing things, etc. I don't think I've ever removed any galaxies though. I just like to tidy up dust, maybe a bit of light pollution in the background. Whereas for a Nebula I'd be doing the opposite and really pulling every bit of data out the background.

To be honest I'm really playing devil's advocate there too, as I can't remember removing much ever. But for example, the M106 I posted recently had lots of nasty noise in the background which I just couldn't get rid off. There were some other wee galaxies in there and I didn't want to lose them, but you couldn't see them well because of all that noise either. So for that one I went far more extreme that I would usually and had to paint out the noise.

https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/393074-m106-and-friends/#comment-4230034

Now maybe I was a bit heavy handed with it, but it took a terribly noisy picture and made it decent imho. I didn't paint in galaxies, or draw stars where there are none, but .. well let me dig out what it looked like before:

I had stacking stuff I didn't want to crop, artifacts because some of the subs didn't have flats, and nasty blobs where starnet2++ had done it's thing.

Trying to get rid of that with curves/levels was cropping into  the data I wanted to keep, so instead I painted out of the noise. That sits fine with me. But I know there are folk who it wouldn't. But is it astro-art ? I'd argue no.

[Bibabutzemann]

1 hour ago, powerlord said:

Oh no, don't get me wrong I thought I was clear. sorry. I'm sort of playing devils advocate on the natural vs HDR is unnatural view. So in your example, sure all the wee galaxies should be there, but so should all the detail in the core rather than it just being a white blob - that's all I was trying to say. So you prefer the white blob rather than flattening the dynamic range into an HDR of the galaxy - I'm fine with  that - it's a preference. Just not more natural than seeing the HDR view is all I am saying.

I'm happy to sit outside of that when I start removing things, etc. I don't think I've ever removed any galaxies though. I just like to tidy up dust, maybe a bit of light pollution in the background. Whereas for a Nebula I'd be doing the opposite and really pulling every bit of data out the background.

To be honest I'm really playing devil's advocate there too, as I can't remember removing much ever. But for example, the M106 I posted recently had lots of nasty noise in the background which I just couldn't get rid off. There were some other wee galaxies in there and I didn't want to lose them, but you couldn't see them well because of all that noise either. So for that one I went far more extreme that I would usually and had to paint out the noise.

https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/393074-m106-and-friends/#comment-4230034

Now maybe I was a bit heavy handed with it, but it took a terribly noisy picture and made it decent imho. I didn't paint in galaxies, or draw stars where there are none, but .. well let me dig out what it looked like before:

I had stacking stuff I didn't want to crop, artifacts because some of the subs didn't have flats, and nasty blobs where starnet2++ had done it's thing.

Trying to get rid of that with curves/levels was cropping into  the data I wanted to keep, so instead I painted out of the noise. That sits fine with me. But I know there are folk who it wouldn't. But is it astro-art ? I'd argue no.

Just to clarify something: 

First, my initial statement  "That attempt looks more natural"  was in comparison to his other attempts where the background looked spotty and stars had big halos. None of those attributes are representing real fluctuations in brightness.

I didnt say its the most natural one can achieve. We could discuss endless, what is the most natural. And like i said, its not always my prime goal to go "natural" and i dont think its automatically the best. Like you said, cameras collect data differently than human eyes. Its Photography, not observal astronomy. But Pitch Black Sky wanted to achieve more natural picuture, so there is that.

I think Vlaivs statement, that he wouldnt call it astrophotography anymore was more related to your statements, such as you do to your image "whatever you feel like". Topaz Denoise is something where we some people draw the line. I mean there has to be a line somewhere, even if its not a sharp line between art and photography. 

And again, we could now discuss endless about semantics, but when someone alters his data so much and adds artificial data, he shouldnt feel surprised if others dont consider that work in the same realm (call it astrophotography or whatever) as others, who only want to show real data

Edited April 7, 2022 by Bibabutzemann

[Felias]

39 minutes ago, powerlord said:

Now maybe I was a bit heavy handed with it, but it took a terribly noisy picture and made it decent imho. I didn't paint in galaxies, or draw stars where there are none, but .. well let me dig out what it looked like before:

I had stacking stuff I didn't want to crop, artifacts because some of the subs didn't have flats, and nasty blobs where starnet2++ had done it's thing.

Trying to get rid of that with curves/levels was cropping into  the data I wanted to keep, so instead I painted out of the noise. That sits fine with me. But I know there are folk who it wouldn't. But is it astro-art ? I'd argue no.

Personally, I have found that using starnet seriously damages my photos. Maybe it's my noisy data, but the circles around the stars are horrible, the pictures end up looking like Emmental cheese -and I suspect it increases the noise as well. You can see those circles clearly in your photo above; it's bad enough for the bigger stars, but those around the smaller ones create a "foamy" background or red and green noise. I now use a star mask in photoshop to protect the stars; it works fine, especially if after each stretch one uses the 'fade' function, and doesn't create such artifacts.

[teoria_del_big_bang]

18 minutes ago, Felias said:

Personally, I have found that using starnet seriously damages my photos. Maybe it's my noisy data, but the circles around the stars are horrible, the pictures end up looking like Emmental cheese -and I suspect it increases the noise as well. You can see those circles clearly in your photo above; it's bad enough for the bigger stars, but those around the smaller ones create a "foamy" background or red and green noise. I now use a star mask in photoshop to protect the stars; it works fine, especially if after each stretch one uses the 'fade' function, and doesn't create such artifacts.

I did a few tests on a recent image that was proving particularly difficult to make starless due to 2 very bright stars and found that Starnet2 worked much better then Starnet but StarXTerminator using AI StarXTerminator.7 was by far the best and that doing it at the linear stage also worked much better than the non linear stage.
I think that it does pay to play about a bit with the different methods of making images starless as they can produce vastly different results, some certainly not favorable, and to be careful in Starnet2 and StarXTerminator to check the linear checkbox if data has not been stretched (I think the results indicate quite clearly that you forgot to do this if you do forget).
But I do agree that making starless images without artefacts is not always straightforward and I think some targets work better than others.

Steve

[jager945]

15 hours ago, vlaiv said:

These are not narrow band filters

Indeed, apologies, I'm really just adding a little to the misinformation; these filters are indeed technically "wideband" filters (W designation), but - most important for your assertions, are not type of wideband filters (RGB filters) we all use; they do not record color as-we-see-it. They record different parts of the spectrum; F814W records mostly infrared and F435 records well into the ultra-violet, while there is a substantial gap in visual red response between F814 and F555. Bottom line is that you will not get visual spectrum images out of this filter set, and using any HST image as reference for visual spectrum (400-700nm) colouring is a bad (non-sensical) idea!

With regards to (current) AI tools, it is really quite simple; they add stuff that isn't there and isn't real, using external sources. This is in contrast to algorithms that exclusively transform and use what is in your dataset. Such operations can usually be reversed by applying the inverse of the operation to arrive at the original image. Not so with neural hallucination. Its whole premise is precisely to neurally hallucinate "plausible" detail from a given input. Plausible does not equate real. Let alone the fact that any plausible detail originates from an exclusively non-astro training set in the case of the Topaz suite.

Things like StarNet++ are a solution looking for a problem (other than rendering a plausible starless image for artistic purposes of course, or using it to create star masks - the latter is absolutely a good use case!), I cannot think of any legitimate reason to introduce data that was never recorded into your photograph. Separating stars from background for the purpose of compositing later, is wholly unnecessary and yields no benefits, only drawbacks (in the form of artifacts). Fortunately, it is usually easy to pick when StarNet was used for that purpose, even for a layperson (the Swiss cheese effect, translucent stars, missing stars, odd discs, etc.).

I got nothing against AI (I studied AI in University!), but the way it is currently employed by "tools" like StarNet and Topaz AI is unsophisticated and gimmicky, rather than making true photographs actually better (again, with the exception of identifying stars for the purpose of masking). There are absolutely legit applications for AI in astronomy (and even image processing tasks), but neural hallucination is probably the laziest, lowest hanging fruit for which a neural net can be deployed. It's literally the turn-your-face-into-a-super-model Instagram filter equivalent of astrophotography (sometimes with equally hilarious/disturbing results - to me anyway). We can do better. And I'm convinced a useful application will come along some day. In the meantime, I would urge anyone who thinks these things are the best thing since sliced bread, to do a little research into how they work. It's not magic, the resulting detail is not real, wasn't just "hidden" in your dataset, and was not really recorded by you. The emperor has no clothes.

[alacant]

5 hours ago, jager945 said:

they add stuff that isn't there

'Oh, look. It's been done with Topaz.'

5 hours ago, jager945 said:

StarNet++ are a solution looking for a problem

'Oh, look. It's been done with StarNet++.'

Which maybe could be said of other apps too, but to a much lesser extent.

No need to invent or remove stuff though. Any tricking of the eye can be used to advantage using data which is actually in the image you took, as demonstrated admirably by @jager945's algorithms.

Arnheim covers this in his masterful 'Art and Visual Perception', 1974 [1]. If I may quote an abstract:  

Quote

 

It casts the visual process in psychological terms and describes the creative way one's eye organizes visual material according to specific psychological premises.

 

 

 

Cheers

[1] ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 8420678740 (Spanish, but translated into most other languages)

 

Edited April 8, 2022 by alacant

[vlaiv]

2 hours ago, jager945 said:

Indeed, apologies, I'm really just adding a little to the misinformation; these filters are indeed technically "wideband" filters (W designation), but - most important for your assertions, are not type of wideband filters (RGB filters) we all use; they do not record color as-we-see-it. They record different parts of the spectrum; F814W records mostly infrared and F435 records well into the ultra-violet, while there is a substantial gap in visual red response between F814 and F555. Bottom line is that you will not get visual spectrum images out of this filter set, and using any HST image as reference for visual spectrum (400-700nm) colouring is a bad (non-sensical) idea!

Interesting fact is that you can color star field - like open cluster with only two narrow band filters - like OIII + SII for example.

Stars simply follow (for the most part) Planck's law and you can derive slope of that curve from only two points / two measurements to deduce temperature of the star.

[ONIKKINEN]

16 hours ago, Graham Darke said:

Here's my effort in StarTools. I always use Film Dev for my post Wipe stretch.

My process here was 1. AutoDev 2. Bin 3. Crop  4. Wipe 5. Film Dev to 95.34% with Skyglow set to 5%  6. HDR  7. Sharp   8. Decon   9. Colour - clicked on outer core to reduce green and reduced percentage to 143% on "constancy" colour setting. 10. Noise Reduction set to 2 pixels 

This is very nice, doesn't look "startoolsy" and artificial at all to me. I have been convinced with my own attempts with startools that there is no way to get a good looking result (judging from pictures posted most have this issue), but this shows that there is and one just has to learn to use the software.

[ollypenrice]

16 hours ago, powerlord said:

 

There is, imho nothing 'realistic' about taking 100s of photos with massively long exposures, using software to stack them stretch them and saturate them. If you want to go down that rabbit hole - I'd accept nothing other than a single exposure on celluloid film for an astrophotography 'photograph'.

I can't agree with this.  What you 'photograph' in a single exposure on celluloid film will include:

- Colours determined by the chemists who brewed the film's emulsion.

- Colours affected by the colour correction of the optics.

- System noise including the limited responsiveness of the film and the irregularities of your own light path.

Somewhere in the middle of that lot, yes, the object will also contribute to the image! 😁

Now, when we go through the palaver of multiple stacking, dark subtraction, colour calibration and flat fielding, we are reducing the system noise and increasing the contribution of the object to the final picture.  The fidelity of the image, which can only mean its resemblance to the original out there in nature, is enhanced by the palaver we go through.  There is nothing natural about any form of photography. I cannot, alas, grow a camera in my veg plot. It is, in all its forms, a technological process and requires ever increasing complexity to reproduce increasingly accurate representations. A simple camera will take a less accurate (and therefore less natural?) photograph. I believe the idea that a basic point and shoot Box Brownie takes a more natural picture than a Leica Q is fallacious.

 

In a nutshell astrophotography is about extending the sensitivity and dynamic range of our eyes, and 'natural' astrophotos are ones which we suppose resemble what our eyes would see if they didn't need this techonological help. The technological help AP provides does not resemble the technological help provided by a telescope because of the intractable 'surface brightness problem.' (Bright enough to see soon means too big to fit in our field of view.)

Olly

 

[powerlord]

1 hour ago, ollypenrice said:

I can't agree with this.  What you 'photograph' in a single exposure on celluloid film will include:

- Colours determined by the chemists who brewed the film's emulsion.

- Colours affected by the colour correction of the optics.

- System noise including the limited responsiveness of the film and the irregularities of your own light path.

Somewhere in the middle of that lot, yes, the object will also contribute to the image! 😁

Now, when we go through the palaver of multiple stacking, dark subtraction, colour calibration and flat fielding, we are reducing the system noise and increasing the contribution of the object to the final picture.  The fidelity of the image, which can only mean its resemblance to the original out there in nature, is enhanced by the palaver we go through.  There is nothing natural about any form of photography. I cannot, alas, grow a camera in my veg plot. It is, in all its forms, a technological process and requires ever increasing complexity to reproduce increasingly accurate representations. A simple camera will take a less accurate (and therefore less natural?) photograph. I believe the idea that a basic point and shoot Box Brownie takes a more natural picture than a Leica Q is fallacious.

 

In a nutshell astrophotography is about extending the sensitivity and dynamic range of our eyes, and 'natural' astrophotos are ones which we suppose resemble what our eyes would see if they didn't need this techonological help. The technological help AP provides does not resemble the technological help provided by a telescope because of the intractable 'surface brightness problem.' (Bright enough to see soon means too big to fit in our field of view.)

Olly

 

fine with me - I was just playing devil's advocate - I wasn't really being serious...😉

Just pointing out that the world 'natural' means different things to different people. One of dynamic range representation in a flat format so our eyes can make sense of it. @Bibabutzemann then clarified above saying that's not he was referring to anyway, so it was all a rather moot point.. though does seem to have stirred some strong feelings.

For what it's worth - no devil's advocate..my 2c - I agree, we've never been in a better position with technology allowing us to see as much as possible in what is out there. It can be represented in different ways. Whether it's flattening that dynamic range so we can see it all in a 'photo', leaving it as we might see it via a regular long photo, shooting it in false colour, etc.

And if one starts cutting galaxies and sticking them all together in front of the moon, with a spaceship, then probably don't claim you took it last night from your back garden. 🙂

stu

Edited April 8, 2022 by powerlord

[ollypenrice]

4 minutes ago, powerlord said:

fine with me - I was just playing devil's advocate - I wasn't really being serious...😉

Just pointing out that the world 'natural' means different things to different people. One of dynamic range representation in a flat format so our eyes can make sense of it. @Bibabutzemann then clarified above saying that's not he was referring to anyway, so it was all a rather moot point.. though does seem to have stirred some strong feelings.

For what it's worth - no devil's advocate..my 2c - I agree, we've never been in a better position with technology allowing us to see as much as possible in what is out there. It can be represented in different ways. Whether it's flattening that dynamic range so we can see it all in a 'photo', leaving it as we might see it via a regular long photo, shooting it in false colour, etc.

And if one starts cutting galaxies and sticking them all together in from of the moon with a spaceship, then probably don't claim you took it last night from your back garden. 🙂

stu

Wouldn't dream of it....

Olly

[powerlord]

that's nothing, just coincidentally, I got one of these 'lucky images' last night, and caught the spagetti monster mid leap, jumping off the rosette nebula onto the moon.