4 ms·

Too late to edit my comment but amateur astronomer was a poor label for the guy who took the picture. He is the best astrophotographer for satellites that I've

Too late to edit my comment but amateur astronomer was a poor label for the guy who took the picture. He is the best astrophotographer for satellites that I've seen. Here is his personal website where he has his collection: http://www.ralfvandebergh-astrophotography.simpsite.nl/home http://www.ralfvandebergh-astrophotography.simpsite.nl/home

nwallin 7y ago
There are two groups of people who take pictures of satellites: 1. Amateur astronomers like this guy. 2. Nation states who take clandestine photos of other nation's spy satellites. These pictures are better, but you haven't seen them. For everything else, there's some guy working in the lab who's like, "oh, you want a picture of our satellite? Of course, there's like 40 of them on our press site. Do you need more? I can ask around and see if anyone's taken selfies from interesting angles." So there's no open institutional force behind it. So the only reasonable outcome of natural market forces is that amateur astronomers create the best pictures of satellites in orbit. Amateur astronomer isn't a slur either, if that was your point. Take a look at the galleries on cloudnights, a lot of it wouldn't look out of place on NASA/ESA homepages.
- batbomb 7y ago
  (3) Astronomers - usually not on purpose
  - skykooler 7y ago
    Astronomers usually aren't tracking satellites, so if one shows up in an image it's only as a streak. You need to be moving the camera to track the object to get a reasonably clear image (or very short exposure times, which are relatively uncommon in astronomy).
- Herodotus38 7y ago
  Agree with everything you said. I just meant he has a Wikipedia page where he's listed as an astronomer and professional photographer. I'm not sure where the line is drawn between amateur and professional in his case. I'm not sure if he works professionally as an astronomer as well, although he seems to be more of a space journalist. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralf_Vandebergh https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralf_Vandebergh

nwallin 7y ago

There are two groups of people who take pictures of satellites: 1. Amateur astronomers like this guy. 2. Nation states who take clandestine photos of other nation's spy satellites. These pictures are better, but you haven't seen them. For everything else, there's some guy working in the lab who's like, "oh, you want a picture of our satellite? Of course, there's like 40 of them on our press site. Do you need more? I can ask around and see if anyone's taken selfies from interesting angles." So there's no open institutional force behind it. So the only reasonable outcome of natural market forces is that amateur astronomers create the best pictures of satellites in orbit. Amateur astronomer isn't a slur either, if that was your point. Take a look at the galleries on cloudnights, a lot of it wouldn't look out of place on NASA/ESA homepages.

batbomb 7y ago
(3) Astronomers - usually not on purpose
- skykooler 7y ago
  Astronomers usually aren't tracking satellites, so if one shows up in an image it's only as a streak. You need to be moving the camera to track the object to get a reasonably clear image (or very short exposure times, which are relatively uncommon in astronomy).
Herodotus38 7y ago
Agree with everything you said. I just meant he has a Wikipedia page where he's listed as an astronomer and professional photographer. I'm not sure where the line is drawn between amateur and professional in his case. I'm not sure if he works professionally as an astronomer as well, although he seems to be more of a space journalist. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralf_Vandebergh https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralf_Vandebergh