10 ms·

My astrophotography in the movie Project Hail Mary

911 points by wallflower 6mo ago

Xenoamorphous 6mo ago
Astrophagology?
inaros 6mo ago
[flagged]
- kdaker 6mo ago
  OP, who seem like an accomplished astrophotographer is sharing a proud moment involving his work. All you can say is how bad the movie is? You can share this in on a post about the movie itself. Btw beautiful photographs OP.
  - inaros 6mo ago
    Its seems the post is part of a coordinated pump on the movie here by Amazon Studios. As you can see, if you look at the amount of related post coordinated with the release. And never seen for any other movie...
    - dcminter 6mo ago
      Even if promotional (which I doubt even if other posts are), this ticks the 'is interesting and not shallow' box for me.
    - dwringer 6mo ago
      People have been talking about the book on here since it came out; I see no reason to believe people aren't genuinely interested in it. I loved it, personally.
    - jebarker 6mo ago
      > Its seems the post is part of a coordinated pump on the movie here by Amazon Studios Is there any evidence for this?
      - inaros 6mo ago
        The studios behind Project Hail Mary have documented histories of fake online promotion and the industry to do it again is booming. I don't have proof that Amazon MGM Studios is astroturfing HN or Reddit about Project Hail Mary. What I do have is a chain of documented facts that should make anyone reading enthusiastic comments about this film pause and consider the source... Project Hail Mary is produced by Amazon MGM Studios and distributed internationally by Sony Pictures. The film cost $200 million to produce and needs roughly $500 million to break even. Amazon MGM has had a string of expensive flops (Crime 101, Melania, After the Hunt), and there was reported internal pressure for this film to change the narrative. Amazon MGM's Head of Global Marketing is Sue Kroll, who spent 24 years at Warner Bros. serving as President of Worldwide Marketing and Distribution. Her deputy for international marketing, Charlie Coleman, also came from Warner Bros. Awards head Juli Goodwin spent nearly 20 years at Warner Bros. This matters because Warner Bros Home Entertainment was caught by the FTC in 2016 paying YouTube influencers (including PewDiePie) thousands of dollars through ad agency Plaid Social Labs. Warner Bros settled with the FTC. Also lets not forget Sony Pictures invented a fake movie critic in 2001, and around the same time, were caught using employees posing as moviegoers in TV commercials for The Patriot. Sony at the end paid $326,000 to Connecticut's AG and $1.5 million in a class-action settlement... The industry to do this on Reddit and other public forums is openly thriving. There are companies that will, right now, post on Reddit and HN? as "organic users" for paying clients. They describe these services on their own websites: • Onemotion Group (onemotion.group) openly advertises "real-looking posts, comments, and threads that catch on" with a focus on "organic posts, community replies, and making threads spread naturally." • Single Grain (singlegrain.com/agency/reddit-marketing-agency) sells "conversation monitoring," "question response systems," and "thoughtful comments and contributions that establish your brand as a helpful community member." • OutreachBloom describes monitoring subreddits and responding with "helpful" answers using pre-warmed accounts with built-up karma. Specially an agency called Iron Roots (ironrootsinc.com) lists both Amazon Studios and Warner Bros. as clients... Describes services including "engaging communities with compelling content and fostering active, loyal brand advocates across platforms." I am not claiming Project Hail Mary is being astroturfed. I am pointing out: 1. Both studios behind this film (Amazon MGM and Sony) have documented, FTC-adjudicated histories of deceptive online promotion. 2. The marketing leadership at Amazon MGM comes directly from Warner Bros., where this behavior was institutionally tolerated. 3. An entire commercial industry exists to post as organic users on Reddit, HN, and forums, some of these agencies list Amazon Studios as a client. 4. The financial incentive is massive: a $200M film from a studio desperate to prove its theatrical strategy works. 5. The penalties when caught have been trivial relative to marketing budgets ($326K for Sony, consent decree for Warner Bros.), and there is no ongoing enforcement mechanism for community forum manipulation. When someone on HN or Reddit posts an enthusiastic take about a major studio release, the question is not whether astroturfing happens. We know it does, the companies that do it have websites. The question is whether you can tell the difference between a genuine fan and a paid account?
  - quietbritishjim 6mo ago
    I don't see any reason to suggest the HN submitter is the same as the article author, especially considering the high volume of submitted articles by the submitter.
  - inaros 6mo ago
    This is supposed to be a smart community..but you and at least at 30% here dont seem to be able to grasp, the OP is not the Astrophotographer.
- kvgr 6mo ago
  Why are some people so narrow minded? Different style, get over it. Not everything SciFi must be "true scifi like Star Trek". This rant reminds me of Big Bang theory.
  - izzydata 6mo ago
    Star Trek is true scifi? I always considered it to be soft scifi due to it being more about social issues in space rather than the more hard scifi about the fictional science. At least the book of Project Hail Mary is closer to hard scifi than Star Trek as they spend a lot of time describing the science. The movie rightfully skips most of this tedium in favor of a beautiful spectacle. This is the first time I've heard of the idea of "true" scifi though.
    - ceejayoz 6mo ago
      Star Trek is largely fantasy.
      - BenjiWiebe 6mo ago
        IMO if "fantasy" tries to explain things as being technology, it's (soft) sci-fi. If it describes it as magic, then it's fantasy.
        ceejayoz 6mo ago
        Technobabble is just tech-sounding magic.
        izzydata 6mo ago
        They have different writing styles generally, but it is still pointless to call Star Trek a fantasy for the same reason why you wouldn't call Lord of the Rings a science fiction. If you have a spectrum from fantasy to science fiction with 5 being the middle then maybe Star Trek would be a 6 and Star Wars being more of a 5. Personally I'd classify Dune to be more of a fantasy than Star Trek just because of the style it is written in being very mystical and prophetic.
- ceejayoz 6mo ago
  I enjoyed the hell out of it. Consider the possibility that your opinions are not universal.
  - throw0101d 6mo ago
    > Consider the possibility that your opinions are not universal. Critic and audience reactions are generally positive: > On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 94% of 326 critics' reviews are positive. The website's consensus reads: "A visually dazzling space odyssey that's carried along effortlessly by the gravitational pull of Ryan Gosling at his most winning, Project Hail Mary is a near-miraculous fusion of smarts and heart."[47] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 77 out of 100, based on 55 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[48] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.[49] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Hail_Mary_(film)#Critical_response https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Hail_Mary_(film)#Criti...
    - inaros 6mo ago
      Did you watch the movie? Those reviews are manipulated... Do you believe in the concept of objectivity? Meaning some movies are Objectively better than others, some Reviews are Objectively better than other? If I bring a bunch of kids and teens to the movie, and at the end they all cant stop talking about how much they loved the rock, should I give an Oscar to Ryan Gosling?
      - ceejayoz 6mo ago
        > Do you believe in the concept of objectivity? Meaning some movies are Objectively better than others, some Reviews are Objectively better than other? In this context? Absolutely not. One person's favorite movie is another's least. > If I bring a bunch of kids and teens to the movie, and at the end they all cant stop talking about how much they loved the rock, should I give an Oscar to Ryan Gosling? It's OK for a movie to not be an Oscar contender.
        6mo ago
- Sharlin 6mo ago
  As another data point, a local well-respected popular astronomy magazine was quite impressed by the movie, relative to Hollywood standards anyway. Translated link: https://www-avaruus-fi.translate.goog/uutiset/tahtiharrastus-ja-taivaanilmiot/klassinen-avaruusseikkailu-operaatio-ave-maria-saapuu-elokuvateattereihin.html?_x_tr_sl=fi&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://www-avaruus-fi.translate.goog/uutiset/tahtiharrastus...
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
- ggambetta 6mo ago
  That's just, like, your opinion, man. I loved the book and I loved the movie.
  - inaros 6mo ago
    I do not deny that people enjoy it. I am saying that the film humor, dialogue, and emotional treatment strike me as pitched at a comparatively childish level.... ;-)
- kevinsync 6mo ago
  I don’t even know what to say here -- you’re entitled to your opinion obviously, and I disagree with it deeply, and the spirit of HN is to avoid personal attacks and reply with curiosity, but you kinda laid it out very plainly above. Where’s your imagination gone? Your connection to child-like wonder? Empathy for your fellow man? Project Hail Mary isn’t Arrival, it’s ET mixed with Castaway. It’s about friendship and loneliness and the fragility of the human experience and the triumph of the human spirit! Normally I’d just say “you didn’t get it, it wasn’t for you” but given the insufferable and total dismissal above, I’d wager it actually IS for you LOL but you chose not to receive the message. Anyways, everybody’s a critic these days, I get that. I’d just encourage people to soften a bit and appreciate things for what they are (not what we want them to be)
  - johnbarron 6mo ago
    >> It’s about friendship and loneliness and the fragility of the human experience and the triumph of the human spirit! So is every Disney movie and that is what this but with the crappy Amazon Studios take on it. >> Anyways, everybody’s a critic these days, Do you believe a movie can objectively be considered good or bad? If you do you then believe some are better critics than others, the same some way some are better Coders than others or better Basketball players than others?
    - kevinsync 6mo ago
      You're asking the wrong person lol. I can give you a list of "objectively bad" movies that I think are incredible for a variety of defensible reasons. Just off the top of my head as I briefly scan shit sitting on the shelves of my office: - Joe Dirt - Death Wish 3 - Thrashin - Hackers - Mortal Kombat - Uncle Buck - The Incredible Burt Wonderstone - Tapeheads - Prayer of the Rollerboys - Weekend at Bernie's Not exactly Fellini, and some are barely even Andy Sidaris if we're being honest, but every movie in that list is amazing for different reasons. An objective critique of any of them (especially in context with "film", as a shapeless, vague concept) misses the point and the spirit of each and every one. But I am an uncultured heathen, so ...
- vintagedave 6mo ago
  Deadpool's humour was violent and crude. I don't remember anything like that at all in Project Hail Mary. It was a buddy film, and an American one, so had that culture in its humour, sure. But it was light-hearted and quite fun.
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
poulpy123 6mo ago
nice !
0x38B 6mo ago
Me and my brother just saw the movie tonight and we stayed for the credits. I thought the images were beautiful.
- Tommix11 6mo ago
  I loved that they changed the ending. I did not like the ending in the book.
  - embedding-shape 6mo ago
    About to see the movie in two days, read the book ages ago and remember I wasn't too fond of the book ending either, so now I got a bit more excited :)
    - Sivart13 6mo ago
      I don't think they changed much about the ending. There's one scene added that's not in the book, but the outcomes are all the same.
  - minitech 6mo ago
    What changed about the ending?
    - 0xf00ff00f 6mo ago
      No spoilers please, not everyone has seen the movie!
      - deleted 6mo ago
        [deleted]
      - minitech 6mo ago
        That’s what rot13 is for.
throw0101d 6mo ago
Somewhat related, nature photographer/youtuber Danni Connor had her recording of a red squirrel used in the movie Dune (Part 1) for the sound of the desert mouse (muad'dib). Her interviewing with (Oscar-winning) sound designer Mark Mangini on it: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtfzjehDg74 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtfzjehDg74 * transcript: https://otter.ai/u/PA9dbWFA7BgPgLZN9CSo1WFAjXk https://otter.ai/u/PA9dbWFA7BgPgLZN9CSo1WFAjXk * https://www.iflscience.com/wildlife-photographers-viral-squirrel-clip-becomes-voice-of-dunes-desert-mouse-61502 https://www.iflscience.com/wildlife-photographers-viral-squi... * https://markmangini.com/Mark_Mangini/Blog/Entries/2021/11/7_Dune_-_The_Dsert_Mouse.html https://markmangini.com/Mark_Mangini/Blog/Entries/2021/11/7_... Story of her 'adopting' the squirrels: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tDlh62AVPo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tDlh62AVPo The name of the squirrel is "Baby Pear"; her viral tweet: * https://twitter.com/DaniConnorWild/status/1275349417508384768 https://twitter.com/DaniConnorWild/status/127534941750838476...
j_bum 6mo ago
Incredible work, OP. What a proud feeling you must have. Congrats!! My wife and I saw the movie this weekend, we thought it was great. I adored the book, yet I recognize a book can’t be perfectly translated to the screen. I thought the directors did a good enough job at translating the sci-fi into something the masses would enjoy. Kudos to you
- superchink 6mo ago
  Would you recommend reading the book first?
  - zyberzero 6mo ago
    Not the parent, but I've seen the movie and read the book. I think there are a few gaps in the movie that's explained by the book, but there are some artistic freedom as well between the book and the film. I would recommend reading the book first at least.
  - aczerepinski 6mo ago
    Book is better but they’re both good. I don’t think order matters.
    - geerlingguy 6mo ago
      I agree; the movie is more of a relationship/self-reflection/friendship story, with some pop science and space stuff mixed in to keep it interesting. The book is more of a true sci-fi novel, with the relationship stuff keeping it interesting. I liked both a lot, and think both could be enjoyed fully with or without the other, in either order.
      - estebank 6mo ago
        I found that I would have enjoyed the movie a bit more if I hadn't read the book, but it was still a solid 8/10. I'm really glad that a movie like this did well in opening weekend.
shubhamjain 6mo ago
Amazing! Kudos to Hollywood, for going to this length to license the work, credit the author, involve him in the project. To respect realism as a goal for its own, even though "no one will notice" and a similar image might be "just a prompt away." I know how common is the latter these days.
- tomasphan 6mo ago
  I doubt that good looking IMAX quality astrophotography is just a prompt away.
  - deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
inaros 6mo ago
[flagged]
- austinthetaco 6mo ago
  This is hn not reddit. This feels like a wildly out of place and inappropriate comment for this kind of discussion.
  - johnbarron 6mo ago
    The movie got 12 posts here on HN, pumped by Amazon Studios within the day of release but suddenly it cant be discussed?
    - austinthetaco 6mo ago
      If you have some proof of astroturfing you should write a blog and then share on hn, it might make for a very good post here. otherwise it feels wildly inappropriate (not to mention incredibly unlikely that they would spend marketing money on astroturfing here of all places). Andy Weir has written some books that are incredibly successful in the tech industry circles with Hail Mary being the current most popular if not slightly under The Martian, chances are there's just going to be a lot of talk about it. But even if there is astroturfing, telling people to not watch the movie in a thread where someone is showing off their space photography is inappropriate and misplaced.
      - inaros 6mo ago
        The author of the great Astrophotography is not the OP of the HN post. And that is already one starting and possible isolated indicator of astroturfing, ....when the movie related posts got no traction, they went looking for related subjects...
        dahart 6mo ago
        That proves nothing. You are making assumptions. Did you look at the submission history of the poster? HN runs on user-submitted posts. People submit things they find interesting, and things they believe others will find interesting.
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
double07zip 6mo ago
This is amazing. Your photos are art!
DorkyPup 6mo ago
This is incredible and wonderful news, huge congratulations! As someone who works at the intersection of design and engineering, the detail about delivering "starless versions" so the credit typography doesn't compete with the bright stars is exactly the kind of invisible technical problem-solving I love reading about on here. On a personal note, I find it very refreshing to hear that a major studio opted for real captured photography. Love that they specifically wanted the authenticity of real narrowband data and that speaks to the production team's vision. Enjoy the premiere night, feel incredibly proud. I was already planning on watching the movie this weekend (it releases here on the 26th) and now I'm doubly excited because I know this neat little tidbit. I'm pretty sure this "Dad did something crazy" moment is going to be a core memory for your kids. Congrats!
- vintagedave 6mo ago
  I'm curious how the starless versions are created. From the steps at the end, I couldn't see a 'this is how stars are removed' step. Maybe it's part of stacking (but most stars would remain present?) or the calibration process treating stars as noise?
  - roblh 6mo ago
    I feel like the stars are probably pretty easy to mask out since they’re very bright relative to the rest of the image. Once you have the mask, each one is small enough that you could probably fill it with the values from adjacent pixels. Kinda like sensor mapping to hide dead pixels. That’s just a guess though, I’m sure there’s more to it than that.
    - touisteur 6mo ago
      Bright stars are so bright they literally mask areas of the sky. You'll probably need deconvolution algorithms (CLEAN being the standard some time ago, don't know whether some AI/deep-inv approach works nowadays...) to remove them.
      - 6mo ago
ferreyadinarta 6mo ago
[flagged]
gwbennett 6mo ago
Great, great work! Congratulations and Bravo Zulu! Looking forward to seeing the movie this weekend.
hectdev 6mo ago
As an amateur astrophotographer, I am both so envious and so happy for you. What a wonderful recognition of your talent and dedication to the craft. Kudos!
manyaoman 6mo ago
Those shots are stunning. Too bad I rarely pay attention to the credits. I always assumed a lot of effort goes into them though, and this post seems to confirm it.
TyrunDemeg101 6mo ago
Congrats man! That's an awesome accomplishment! Amazing movie and the end credit visuals WERE incredible!
post_break 6mo ago
This reminds me of the photo of the vehicle assembly building featured in Iron Man: https://adactio.com/journal/1530/ https://adactio.com/journal/1530/
mkehrt 6mo ago
I was wondering what these images were! I wasn't sure if they were real photographs or not. They're great!
- inaros 6mo ago
  The stars were stripped out with neural network tools (StarNet++/StarXTerminator) at the studio request so text credits would read cleanly over them. The underlying nebula data is real, but removing every star from the field puts this firmly in the category of art photography, not scientific imaging. No one has ever or could ever observe a nebula with zero stars in the frame.
stogot 6mo ago
This post makes me want to go see the movie now. Is it in imax? I didn’t enjoy the book (Martian was his best) but maybe I will enjoy this
- Levitating 6mo ago
  Why? I am currently reading the book as well, and I even though I am not a scientist I feel like I am finding small technical/scientific mistakes that shouldn't have had to be there.
khazhoux 6mo ago
Everyone do yourselves a favor and skip all trailers and go see this movie. It was a delight start to finish. I was so glad I knew zero what the story was.
AnDaltan 6mo ago
Dude, amazing! The images are beautiful and it's 1000 times better when you know they're real and not CGI/AI.
- inaros 6mo ago
  They are not real ... https://astrobackyard.com/starnet-astrophotography/ https://astrobackyard.com/starnet-astrophotography/
  - BenjiWiebe 6mo ago
    They're a lot more real than CG/AI. It's very rare and maybe not even possible to have a "true" astrophotography photo. At those light levels, eyes and camera sensors work very differently and even a "plain" astro photo has either been processed a lot, or else doesn't look like what our eyes would see.
    - inaros 6mo ago
      >> They're a lot more real than CG/AI. Fine, but is still art photography with heavy processing. Not to criticize the amazing work of Rod Prazeres, who has now commented on this thread.
      - HeavenFox 6mo ago
        Even straight-out-of-the-camera JPG files have been heavily processed - they are just hidden behind the RAW processor which we have taken for granted; not to mention smartphone photographs, which employ neural network in the processing pipeline.
  - HeavenFox 6mo ago
    That is not what starnet does. It just removes the star from the picture you took, nothing else. It also predates generative AI by a few years. If by "not real", you mean "you removed the stars so it no longer reflect reality!", then real photograph doesn't exist. For example, OP uses narrow-band filters, and it's common to map H-alpha wavelength, which is red, to green in the images. Does that make it unreal? In the end, astrophotography is more art than science; the goal is more about producing aesthetically-pleasing images than doing photometry. Photographers must take some artistic license.
mourner 6mo ago
Amazing achievement, congratulations! Can't seem to be able to read it though, it greets me with "Sorry, you have been blocked" CloudFlare page — is this a HN overloading the website, or did the host accidentally block IPs from Ukraine perhaps?
scientism 6mo ago
That's really great news. For anyone looking for the astrophotography equipment, this is from one of his posts: Telescope: William Optics UltraCat 76 Mount: Sky-Watcher Wave 150i Camera: ZWO ASI2600MM-Pro
- mrandish 6mo ago
  I was curious about this too and looked up the approximate online selling prices for new. The camera: ZWO ASI2600MM Pro ~$2000 and telescopes: Askar 130PHQ Quadruplet Refracting Astrograph ~$3500 and William Optics WIFD Ultra-Cat 76 APO Refractor ~$2200. Mount: Skywatcher NEQ6 Pro ~$1300. Probably also some specialized tripod, adapters, software and lots of time and care. Remarkable results for essentially 'serious hobbyist' money.
rpastro 6mo ago
Hey everyone, I’m the astrophotographer, but I’m not OP. I’m assuming OP picked up my article and posted here and that’s ok! So I quickly created an account here to comment. Having a quick read through the comments I just want to say thank you for the kind words! Please follow my IG (https://www.instagram.com/deepskyjourney https://www.instagram.com/deepskyjourney) to see more of my photography, and the reddit article if you want to drop a comment with any questions :) https://www.reddit.com/r/ProjectHailMary/s/NbRv3sj3fs https://www.reddit.com/r/ProjectHailMary/s/NbRv3sj3fs Cheers, Rod Prazeres
- fosco 6mo ago
  Can you share what equipment was used to capture those images?
  - robocat 6mo ago
    Somewhat answered here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47520283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47520283
  - rpastro 6mo ago
    I’ve had multiple setups over the last 2 years, but for the images displayed in the movie there were two main setups: a William Optics RedCat 51 II and an Askar 130PHQ, both paired with a ZWO ASI2600MM Pro camera, typically on a Sky Watcher NEQ6 Pro mount, along with narrowband and RGB filters depending on the target.
    - hermitcrab 6mo ago
      What sort of magnification do you need to get photos like that?
      - js2 6mo ago
        The Redcat scope FL is 250 mm. The Askar scope FL is 1000 mm. The camera has an APS-C sensor (23.5 mm x 15.7 mm) giving it a crop factor of about 1.5x compared to 35 mm film (where 50mm is considered 1:1 human vision field of view). So: Redcat: 250 / 50 * 1.5 =7.5x magnification Askar : 1000 / 50 * 1.5 =30x magnification This is deep sky photography. Doesn't require lots of magnification. What it does require is dark skies and lots of exposure time. I wish he had more info on his site about his capture process, but it sounds like some of his captures are over multiple nights? I'm not entirely clear on the terminology here: Integration: 17h 50′ Hα: 30×600″ (5h) OIII: 31×600″ (5h 10′) SII: 37×600″ (6h 10′) RGB Stars: 30×60″ each channel (1h 30′ total) https://www.instagram.com/p/DToHq5sk_6r/?img_index=1 https://www.instagram.com/p/DToHq5sk_6r/?img_index=1 I may be wrong with all of this. I haven't done any astrophotography since I was a teen and that was just a 50 mm Nikon SLR on the back of a Celestron 8" CST with motorized manual tracking from highly suboptimal skies (Miami, FL). Still, got some decent shots of the Orion nebula.
tills13 6mo ago
As more an more companies lazily use AI to achieve the same thing I am doubling down on supporting -- even if I don't really care about the subject -- anything that supports actual, real human art.
Faaak 6mo ago
A bit indiscrete, but how much does the licence cost? Is it around hundreds, 1k, 10k?
- brcmthrowaway 6mo ago
  5k
Levitating 6mo ago
This is kind of in line with the story, where amateur astronomers data from around the world is used to test a hypothesis. I am currently reading the book.
eranation 6mo ago
This just warms my heart and gives me hope. First aside from the fact this book got me back into reading, and the movie is one of the better book to film adaptations I've seen, and I'm so happy it gets good box office and justified word of mouth. It shows me another thing - there is demand for human generated content. It's not a big revelation, people prefer to pay a little extra for handmade although they might not really know the difference, they do it because it feels right, to support a local business, or not local, when traveling, I want to support their local business, not some conglomerate that bid the lowest and underpays their workers (until replaced by robots). This gives me hope because as we move to a post AGI world, the only thing preventing a complete dystopia is supply and demand, if the demand for human generated work will stay and grow, we'll be ok. This is not some save the earth, be vegan, "AI is bad" message. If you follow me you know I'm all in on agentic development and try to use AI for everything I can that makes sense, but I do it to free my time to focus on the important things. If more companies will go for the real thing, and more people like us will celebrate them for it, and vote for it with their pockets, then AI will serve humanity, and not vice versa. p.s. If you haven't seen the movie or read the book, then read the book, then see the movie, I'm going to watch it twice, and re-read the book. Yes, it's not Dune, or Hyperion, or Children of Time, or The Left Hand of Darkness, but it's such an amazing storytelling journey that made me go back reading after a 15 years hiatus.
devricky 6mo ago
That is so awesome!
etoxin 6mo ago
Astrophotography is having a bit of a moment right now. The barrier has been reduced greatly and there are some amazing OSS post processing tools.
stefantalpalaru 6mo ago
[dead]

911 points by wallflower 6mo ago

Xenoamorphous 6mo ago

Astrophagology?

inaros 6mo ago

[flagged]

kdaker 6mo ago
OP, who seem like an accomplished astrophotographer is sharing a proud moment involving his work. All you can say is how bad the movie is? You can share this in on a post about the movie itself. Btw beautiful photographs OP.
- inaros 6mo ago
  Its seems the post is part of a coordinated pump on the movie here by Amazon Studios. As you can see, if you look at the amount of related post coordinated with the release. And never seen for any other movie...
  - dcminter 6mo ago
    Even if promotional (which I doubt even if other posts are), this ticks the 'is interesting and not shallow' box for me.
  - dwringer 6mo ago
    People have been talking about the book on here since it came out; I see no reason to believe people aren't genuinely interested in it. I loved it, personally.
  - jebarker 6mo ago
    > Its seems the post is part of a coordinated pump on the movie here by Amazon Studios Is there any evidence for this?
    - inaros 6mo ago
      The studios behind Project Hail Mary have documented histories of fake online promotion and the industry to do it again is booming. I don't have proof that Amazon MGM Studios is astroturfing HN or Reddit about Project Hail Mary. What I do have is a chain of documented facts that should make anyone reading enthusiastic comments about this film pause and consider the source... Project Hail Mary is produced by Amazon MGM Studios and distributed internationally by Sony Pictures. The film cost $200 million to produce and needs roughly $500 million to break even. Amazon MGM has had a string of expensive flops (Crime 101, Melania, After the Hunt), and there was reported internal pressure for this film to change the narrative. Amazon MGM's Head of Global Marketing is Sue Kroll, who spent 24 years at Warner Bros. serving as President of Worldwide Marketing and Distribution. Her deputy for international marketing, Charlie Coleman, also came from Warner Bros. Awards head Juli Goodwin spent nearly 20 years at Warner Bros. This matters because Warner Bros Home Entertainment was caught by the FTC in 2016 paying YouTube influencers (including PewDiePie) thousands of dollars through ad agency Plaid Social Labs. Warner Bros settled with the FTC. Also lets not forget Sony Pictures invented a fake movie critic in 2001, and around the same time, were caught using employees posing as moviegoers in TV commercials for The Patriot. Sony at the end paid $326,000 to Connecticut's AG and $1.5 million in a class-action settlement... The industry to do this on Reddit and other public forums is openly thriving. There are companies that will, right now, post on Reddit and HN? as "organic users" for paying clients. They describe these services on their own websites: • Onemotion Group (onemotion.group) openly advertises "real-looking posts, comments, and threads that catch on" with a focus on "organic posts, community replies, and making threads spread naturally." • Single Grain (singlegrain.com/agency/reddit-marketing-agency) sells "conversation monitoring," "question response systems," and "thoughtful comments and contributions that establish your brand as a helpful community member." • OutreachBloom describes monitoring subreddits and responding with "helpful" answers using pre-warmed accounts with built-up karma. Specially an agency called Iron Roots (ironrootsinc.com) lists both Amazon Studios and Warner Bros. as clients... Describes services including "engaging communities with compelling content and fostering active, loyal brand advocates across platforms." I am not claiming Project Hail Mary is being astroturfed. I am pointing out: 1. Both studios behind this film (Amazon MGM and Sony) have documented, FTC-adjudicated histories of deceptive online promotion. 2. The marketing leadership at Amazon MGM comes directly from Warner Bros., where this behavior was institutionally tolerated. 3. An entire commercial industry exists to post as organic users on Reddit, HN, and forums, some of these agencies list Amazon Studios as a client. 4. The financial incentive is massive: a $200M film from a studio desperate to prove its theatrical strategy works. 5. The penalties when caught have been trivial relative to marketing budgets ($326K for Sony, consent decree for Warner Bros.), and there is no ongoing enforcement mechanism for community forum manipulation. When someone on HN or Reddit posts an enthusiastic take about a major studio release, the question is not whether astroturfing happens. We know it does, the companies that do it have websites. The question is whether you can tell the difference between a genuine fan and a paid account?
- quietbritishjim 6mo ago
  I don't see any reason to suggest the HN submitter is the same as the article author, especially considering the high volume of submitted articles by the submitter.
- inaros 6mo ago
  This is supposed to be a smart community..but you and at least at 30% here dont seem to be able to grasp, the OP is not the Astrophotographer.
kvgr 6mo ago
Why are some people so narrow minded? Different style, get over it. Not everything SciFi must be "true scifi like Star Trek". This rant reminds me of Big Bang theory.
- izzydata 6mo ago
  Star Trek is true scifi? I always considered it to be soft scifi due to it being more about social issues in space rather than the more hard scifi about the fictional science. At least the book of Project Hail Mary is closer to hard scifi than Star Trek as they spend a lot of time describing the science. The movie rightfully skips most of this tedium in favor of a beautiful spectacle. This is the first time I've heard of the idea of "true" scifi though.
  - ceejayoz 6mo ago
    Star Trek is largely fantasy.
    - BenjiWiebe 6mo ago
      IMO if "fantasy" tries to explain things as being technology, it's (soft) sci-fi. If it describes it as magic, then it's fantasy.
      - ceejayoz 6mo ago
        Technobabble is just tech-sounding magic.
        izzydata 6mo ago
        They have different writing styles generally, but it is still pointless to call Star Trek a fantasy for the same reason why you wouldn't call Lord of the Rings a science fiction. If you have a spectrum from fantasy to science fiction with 5 being the middle then maybe Star Trek would be a 6 and Star Wars being more of a 5. Personally I'd classify Dune to be more of a fantasy than Star Trek just because of the style it is written in being very mystical and prophetic.
ceejayoz 6mo ago
I enjoyed the hell out of it. Consider the possibility that your opinions are not universal.
- throw0101d 6mo ago
  > Consider the possibility that your opinions are not universal. Critic and audience reactions are generally positive: > On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 94% of 326 critics' reviews are positive. The website's consensus reads: "A visually dazzling space odyssey that's carried along effortlessly by the gravitational pull of Ryan Gosling at his most winning, Project Hail Mary is a near-miraculous fusion of smarts and heart."[47] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 77 out of 100, based on 55 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[48] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.[49] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Hail_Mary_(film)#Critical_response https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Hail_Mary_(film)#Criti...
  - inaros 6mo ago
    Did you watch the movie? Those reviews are manipulated... Do you believe in the concept of objectivity? Meaning some movies are Objectively better than others, some Reviews are Objectively better than other? If I bring a bunch of kids and teens to the movie, and at the end they all cant stop talking about how much they loved the rock, should I give an Oscar to Ryan Gosling?
    - ceejayoz 6mo ago
      > Do you believe in the concept of objectivity? Meaning some movies are Objectively better than others, some Reviews are Objectively better than other? In this context? Absolutely not. One person's favorite movie is another's least. > If I bring a bunch of kids and teens to the movie, and at the end they all cant stop talking about how much they loved the rock, should I give an Oscar to Ryan Gosling? It's OK for a movie to not be an Oscar contender.
      - 6mo ago
Sharlin 6mo ago
As another data point, a local well-respected popular astronomy magazine was quite impressed by the movie, relative to Hollywood standards anyway. Translated link: https://www-avaruus-fi.translate.goog/uutiset/tahtiharrastus-ja-taivaanilmiot/klassinen-avaruusseikkailu-operaatio-ave-maria-saapuu-elokuvateattereihin.html?_x_tr_sl=fi&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://www-avaruus-fi.translate.goog/uutiset/tahtiharrastus...
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ggambetta 6mo ago
That's just, like, your opinion, man. I loved the book and I loved the movie.
- inaros 6mo ago
  I do not deny that people enjoy it. I am saying that the film humor, dialogue, and emotional treatment strike me as pitched at a comparatively childish level.... ;-)
kevinsync 6mo ago
I don’t even know what to say here -- you’re entitled to your opinion obviously, and I disagree with it deeply, and the spirit of HN is to avoid personal attacks and reply with curiosity, but you kinda laid it out very plainly above. Where’s your imagination gone? Your connection to child-like wonder? Empathy for your fellow man? Project Hail Mary isn’t Arrival, it’s ET mixed with Castaway. It’s about friendship and loneliness and the fragility of the human experience and the triumph of the human spirit! Normally I’d just say “you didn’t get it, it wasn’t for you” but given the insufferable and total dismissal above, I’d wager it actually IS for you LOL but you chose not to receive the message. Anyways, everybody’s a critic these days, I get that. I’d just encourage people to soften a bit and appreciate things for what they are (not what we want them to be)
- johnbarron 6mo ago
  >> It’s about friendship and loneliness and the fragility of the human experience and the triumph of the human spirit! So is every Disney movie and that is what this but with the crappy Amazon Studios take on it. >> Anyways, everybody’s a critic these days, Do you believe a movie can objectively be considered good or bad? If you do you then believe some are better critics than others, the same some way some are better Coders than others or better Basketball players than others?
  - kevinsync 6mo ago
    You're asking the wrong person lol. I can give you a list of "objectively bad" movies that I think are incredible for a variety of defensible reasons. Just off the top of my head as I briefly scan shit sitting on the shelves of my office: - Joe Dirt - Death Wish 3 - Thrashin - Hackers - Mortal Kombat - Uncle Buck - The Incredible Burt Wonderstone - Tapeheads - Prayer of the Rollerboys - Weekend at Bernie's Not exactly Fellini, and some are barely even Andy Sidaris if we're being honest, but every movie in that list is amazing for different reasons. An objective critique of any of them (especially in context with "film", as a shapeless, vague concept) misses the point and the spirit of each and every one. But I am an uncultured heathen, so ...
vintagedave 6mo ago
Deadpool's humour was violent and crude. I don't remember anything like that at all in Project Hail Mary. It was a buddy film, and an American one, so had that culture in its humour, sure. But it was light-hearted and quite fun.

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poulpy123 6mo ago

nice !

0x38B 6mo ago

Me and my brother just saw the movie tonight and we stayed for the credits. I thought the images were beautiful.

Tommix11 6mo ago
I loved that they changed the ending. I did not like the ending in the book.
- embedding-shape 6mo ago
  About to see the movie in two days, read the book ages ago and remember I wasn't too fond of the book ending either, so now I got a bit more excited :)
  - Sivart13 6mo ago
    I don't think they changed much about the ending. There's one scene added that's not in the book, but the outcomes are all the same.
- minitech 6mo ago
  What changed about the ending?
  - 0xf00ff00f 6mo ago
    No spoilers please, not everyone has seen the movie!
    - deleted 6mo ago
      [deleted]
    - minitech 6mo ago
      That’s what rot13 is for.

throw0101d 6mo ago

Somewhat related, nature photographer/youtuber Danni Connor had her recording of a red squirrel used in the movie Dune (Part 1) for the sound of the desert mouse (muad'dib). Her interviewing with (Oscar-winning) sound designer Mark Mangini on it: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtfzjehDg74 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtfzjehDg74 * transcript: https://otter.ai/u/PA9dbWFA7BgPgLZN9CSo1WFAjXk https://otter.ai/u/PA9dbWFA7BgPgLZN9CSo1WFAjXk * https://www.iflscience.com/wildlife-photographers-viral-squirrel-clip-becomes-voice-of-dunes-desert-mouse-61502 https://www.iflscience.com/wildlife-photographers-viral-squi... * https://markmangini.com/Mark_Mangini/Blog/Entries/2021/11/7_Dune_-_The_Dsert_Mouse.html https://markmangini.com/Mark_Mangini/Blog/Entries/2021/11/7_... Story of her 'adopting' the squirrels: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tDlh62AVPo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tDlh62AVPo The name of the squirrel is "Baby Pear"; her viral tweet: * https://twitter.com/DaniConnorWild/status/1275349417508384768 https://twitter.com/DaniConnorWild/status/127534941750838476...

j_bum 6mo ago

Incredible work, OP. What a proud feeling you must have. Congrats!! My wife and I saw the movie this weekend, we thought it was great. I adored the book, yet I recognize a book can’t be perfectly translated to the screen. I thought the directors did a good enough job at translating the sci-fi into something the masses would enjoy. Kudos to you

superchink 6mo ago
Would you recommend reading the book first?
- zyberzero 6mo ago
  Not the parent, but I've seen the movie and read the book. I think there are a few gaps in the movie that's explained by the book, but there are some artistic freedom as well between the book and the film. I would recommend reading the book first at least.
- aczerepinski 6mo ago
  Book is better but they’re both good. I don’t think order matters.
  - geerlingguy 6mo ago
    I agree; the movie is more of a relationship/self-reflection/friendship story, with some pop science and space stuff mixed in to keep it interesting. The book is more of a true sci-fi novel, with the relationship stuff keeping it interesting. I liked both a lot, and think both could be enjoyed fully with or without the other, in either order.
    - estebank 6mo ago
      I found that I would have enjoyed the movie a bit more if I hadn't read the book, but it was still a solid 8/10. I'm really glad that a movie like this did well in opening weekend.

shubhamjain 6mo ago

Amazing! Kudos to Hollywood, for going to this length to license the work, credit the author, involve him in the project. To respect realism as a goal for its own, even though "no one will notice" and a similar image might be "just a prompt away." I know how common is the latter these days.

tomasphan 6mo ago
I doubt that good looking IMAX quality astrophotography is just a prompt away.
- deleted 6mo ago
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inaros 6mo ago

[flagged]

austinthetaco 6mo ago
This is hn not reddit. This feels like a wildly out of place and inappropriate comment for this kind of discussion.
- johnbarron 6mo ago
  The movie got 12 posts here on HN, pumped by Amazon Studios within the day of release but suddenly it cant be discussed?
  - austinthetaco 6mo ago
    If you have some proof of astroturfing you should write a blog and then share on hn, it might make for a very good post here. otherwise it feels wildly inappropriate (not to mention incredibly unlikely that they would spend marketing money on astroturfing here of all places). Andy Weir has written some books that are incredibly successful in the tech industry circles with Hail Mary being the current most popular if not slightly under The Martian, chances are there's just going to be a lot of talk about it. But even if there is astroturfing, telling people to not watch the movie in a thread where someone is showing off their space photography is inappropriate and misplaced.
    - inaros 6mo ago
      The author of the great Astrophotography is not the OP of the HN post. And that is already one starting and possible isolated indicator of astroturfing, ....when the movie related posts got no traction, they went looking for related subjects...
      - dahart 6mo ago
        That proves nothing. You are making assumptions. Did you look at the submission history of the poster? HN runs on user-submitted posts. People submit things they find interesting, and things they believe others will find interesting.

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double07zip 6mo ago

This is amazing. Your photos are art!

DorkyPup 6mo ago

This is incredible and wonderful news, huge congratulations! As someone who works at the intersection of design and engineering, the detail about delivering "starless versions" so the credit typography doesn't compete with the bright stars is exactly the kind of invisible technical problem-solving I love reading about on here. On a personal note, I find it very refreshing to hear that a major studio opted for real captured photography. Love that they specifically wanted the authenticity of real narrowband data and that speaks to the production team's vision. Enjoy the premiere night, feel incredibly proud. I was already planning on watching the movie this weekend (it releases here on the 26th) and now I'm doubly excited because I know this neat little tidbit. I'm pretty sure this "Dad did something crazy" moment is going to be a core memory for your kids. Congrats!

vintagedave 6mo ago
I'm curious how the starless versions are created. From the steps at the end, I couldn't see a 'this is how stars are removed' step. Maybe it's part of stacking (but most stars would remain present?) or the calibration process treating stars as noise?
- roblh 6mo ago
  I feel like the stars are probably pretty easy to mask out since they’re very bright relative to the rest of the image. Once you have the mask, each one is small enough that you could probably fill it with the values from adjacent pixels. Kinda like sensor mapping to hide dead pixels. That’s just a guess though, I’m sure there’s more to it than that.
  - touisteur 6mo ago
    Bright stars are so bright they literally mask areas of the sky. You'll probably need deconvolution algorithms (CLEAN being the standard some time ago, don't know whether some AI/deep-inv approach works nowadays...) to remove them.
    - 6mo ago

ferreyadinarta 6mo ago

[flagged]

gwbennett 6mo ago

Great, great work! Congratulations and Bravo Zulu! Looking forward to seeing the movie this weekend.

hectdev 6mo ago

As an amateur astrophotographer, I am both so envious and so happy for you. What a wonderful recognition of your talent and dedication to the craft. Kudos!

manyaoman 6mo ago

Those shots are stunning. Too bad I rarely pay attention to the credits. I always assumed a lot of effort goes into them though, and this post seems to confirm it.

TyrunDemeg101 6mo ago

Congrats man! That's an awesome accomplishment! Amazing movie and the end credit visuals WERE incredible!

post_break 6mo ago

This reminds me of the photo of the vehicle assembly building featured in Iron Man: https://adactio.com/journal/1530/ https://adactio.com/journal/1530/

mkehrt 6mo ago

I was wondering what these images were! I wasn't sure if they were real photographs or not. They're great!

inaros 6mo ago
The stars were stripped out with neural network tools (StarNet++/StarXTerminator) at the studio request so text credits would read cleanly over them. The underlying nebula data is real, but removing every star from the field puts this firmly in the category of art photography, not scientific imaging. No one has ever or could ever observe a nebula with zero stars in the frame.

stogot 6mo ago

This post makes me want to go see the movie now. Is it in imax? I didn’t enjoy the book (Martian was his best) but maybe I will enjoy this

Levitating 6mo ago
Why? I am currently reading the book as well, and I even though I am not a scientist I feel like I am finding small technical/scientific mistakes that shouldn't have had to be there.

khazhoux 6mo ago

Everyone do yourselves a favor and skip all trailers and go see this movie. It was a delight start to finish. I was so glad I knew zero what the story was.

AnDaltan 6mo ago

Dude, amazing! The images are beautiful and it's 1000 times better when you know they're real and not CGI/AI.

inaros 6mo ago
They are not real ... https://astrobackyard.com/starnet-astrophotography/ https://astrobackyard.com/starnet-astrophotography/
- BenjiWiebe 6mo ago
  They're a lot more real than CG/AI. It's very rare and maybe not even possible to have a "true" astrophotography photo. At those light levels, eyes and camera sensors work very differently and even a "plain" astro photo has either been processed a lot, or else doesn't look like what our eyes would see.
  - inaros 6mo ago
    >> They're a lot more real than CG/AI. Fine, but is still art photography with heavy processing. Not to criticize the amazing work of Rod Prazeres, who has now commented on this thread.
    - HeavenFox 6mo ago
      Even straight-out-of-the-camera JPG files have been heavily processed - they are just hidden behind the RAW processor which we have taken for granted; not to mention smartphone photographs, which employ neural network in the processing pipeline.
- HeavenFox 6mo ago
  That is not what starnet does. It just removes the star from the picture you took, nothing else. It also predates generative AI by a few years. If by "not real", you mean "you removed the stars so it no longer reflect reality!", then real photograph doesn't exist. For example, OP uses narrow-band filters, and it's common to map H-alpha wavelength, which is red, to green in the images. Does that make it unreal? In the end, astrophotography is more art than science; the goal is more about producing aesthetically-pleasing images than doing photometry. Photographers must take some artistic license.

mourner 6mo ago

Amazing achievement, congratulations! Can't seem to be able to read it though, it greets me with "Sorry, you have been blocked" CloudFlare page — is this a HN overloading the website, or did the host accidentally block IPs from Ukraine perhaps?

scientism 6mo ago

That's really great news. For anyone looking for the astrophotography equipment, this is from one of his posts: Telescope: William Optics UltraCat 76 Mount: Sky-Watcher Wave 150i Camera: ZWO ASI2600MM-Pro

mrandish 6mo ago
I was curious about this too and looked up the approximate online selling prices for new. The camera: ZWO ASI2600MM Pro ~$2000 and telescopes: Askar 130PHQ Quadruplet Refracting Astrograph ~$3500 and William Optics WIFD Ultra-Cat 76 APO Refractor ~$2200. Mount: Skywatcher NEQ6 Pro ~$1300. Probably also some specialized tripod, adapters, software and lots of time and care. Remarkable results for essentially 'serious hobbyist' money.

rpastro 6mo ago

Hey everyone, I’m the astrophotographer, but I’m not OP. I’m assuming OP picked up my article and posted here and that’s ok! So I quickly created an account here to comment. Having a quick read through the comments I just want to say thank you for the kind words! Please follow my IG (https://www.instagram.com/deepskyjourney https://www.instagram.com/deepskyjourney) to see more of my photography, and the reddit article if you want to drop a comment with any questions :) https://www.reddit.com/r/ProjectHailMary/s/NbRv3sj3fs https://www.reddit.com/r/ProjectHailMary/s/NbRv3sj3fs Cheers, Rod Prazeres

fosco 6mo ago
Can you share what equipment was used to capture those images?
- robocat 6mo ago
  Somewhat answered here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47520283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47520283
- rpastro 6mo ago
  I’ve had multiple setups over the last 2 years, but for the images displayed in the movie there were two main setups: a William Optics RedCat 51 II and an Askar 130PHQ, both paired with a ZWO ASI2600MM Pro camera, typically on a Sky Watcher NEQ6 Pro mount, along with narrowband and RGB filters depending on the target.
  - hermitcrab 6mo ago
    What sort of magnification do you need to get photos like that?
    - js2 6mo ago
      The Redcat scope FL is 250 mm. The Askar scope FL is 1000 mm. The camera has an APS-C sensor (23.5 mm x 15.7 mm) giving it a crop factor of about 1.5x compared to 35 mm film (where 50mm is considered 1:1 human vision field of view). So: Redcat: 250 / 50 * 1.5 =7.5x magnification Askar : 1000 / 50 * 1.5 =30x magnification This is deep sky photography. Doesn't require lots of magnification. What it does require is dark skies and lots of exposure time. I wish he had more info on his site about his capture process, but it sounds like some of his captures are over multiple nights? I'm not entirely clear on the terminology here: Integration: 17h 50′ Hα: 30×600″ (5h) OIII: 31×600″ (5h 10′) SII: 37×600″ (6h 10′) RGB Stars: 30×60″ each channel (1h 30′ total) https://www.instagram.com/p/DToHq5sk_6r/?img_index=1 https://www.instagram.com/p/DToHq5sk_6r/?img_index=1 I may be wrong with all of this. I haven't done any astrophotography since I was a teen and that was just a 50 mm Nikon SLR on the back of a Celestron 8" CST with motorized manual tracking from highly suboptimal skies (Miami, FL). Still, got some decent shots of the Orion nebula.

tills13 6mo ago

As more an more companies lazily use AI to achieve the same thing I am doubling down on supporting -- even if I don't really care about the subject -- anything that supports actual, real human art.

Faaak 6mo ago

A bit indiscrete, but how much does the licence cost? Is it around hundreds, 1k, 10k?

brcmthrowaway 6mo ago
5k

Levitating 6mo ago

This is kind of in line with the story, where amateur astronomers data from around the world is used to test a hypothesis. I am currently reading the book.

eranation 6mo ago

This just warms my heart and gives me hope. First aside from the fact this book got me back into reading, and the movie is one of the better book to film adaptations I've seen, and I'm so happy it gets good box office and justified word of mouth. It shows me another thing - there is demand for human generated content. It's not a big revelation, people prefer to pay a little extra for handmade although they might not really know the difference, they do it because it feels right, to support a local business, or not local, when traveling, I want to support their local business, not some conglomerate that bid the lowest and underpays their workers (until replaced by robots). This gives me hope because as we move to a post AGI world, the only thing preventing a complete dystopia is supply and demand, if the demand for human generated work will stay and grow, we'll be ok. This is not some save the earth, be vegan, "AI is bad" message. If you follow me you know I'm all in on agentic development and try to use AI for everything I can that makes sense, but I do it to free my time to focus on the important things. If more companies will go for the real thing, and more people like us will celebrate them for it, and vote for it with their pockets, then AI will serve humanity, and not vice versa. p.s. If you haven't seen the movie or read the book, then read the book, then see the movie, I'm going to watch it twice, and re-read the book. Yes, it's not Dune, or Hyperion, or Children of Time, or The Left Hand of Darkness, but it's such an amazing storytelling journey that made me go back reading after a 15 years hiatus.

devricky 6mo ago

That is so awesome!

etoxin 6mo ago

Astrophotography is having a bit of a moment right now. The barrier has been reduced greatly and there are some amazing OSS post processing tools.

stefantalpalaru 6mo ago

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