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I don’t think the telescope has to be sitting next to you. Actual astronomers take pictures remotely all the time. They don’t ride a shuttle up to the Hubble Te

by db48x 4mo ago

I don’t think the telescope has to be sitting next to you. Actual astronomers take pictures remotely all the time. They don’t ride a shuttle up to the Hubble Telescope when it’s their turn to take pictures with it, they put coordinates into a website. Even most ground–based observatories are often operated remotely. Many of them are visited by astronomers too, but more and more that’s an optional step. Many astronomers work at yet another remove from operations. They don’t even take the pictures themselves! They collect data from other people’s observations instead! A lot of modern observatories collect so much data that there’s not enough people to look at everything in detail. Whole–sky observatories that take hundreds of photos to image the whole sky every night, satellite missions like GAIA that observed a billion stars to determine their position and velocities, etc, etc.

jjav 4mo ago
> They don’t ride a shuttle up to the Hubble Telescope Right, but that's actual groundbreaking work, capturing image data that has never been captured before. The value there is in the work itself. It's a different game for hobby astrophotography. Unless your budget is enormous, you're not going to every capture a photo that isn't already 10x better somewhere in https://app.astrobin.com/search https://app.astrobin.com/search So what's the point then? I find it can be difficult to answer that question. There really isn't any point, other than the fun of the hobby. Why do I frame a photo of the Orion nebula that I took, which objectively is pretty much junk compared to everything in astrobin.com? Only because it has value to me because I took, but it doesn't really have any other value.
- db48x 4mo ago
  But surely the photo has the same value to you no matter how much effort it took. Sitting outside in the cold next to your telescope while you take the photo doesn’t make the picture more valuable than sitting inside at your computer taking the photo.
  - jjav 4mo ago
    > But surely the photo has the same value to you no matter how much effort it took. Maybe? That's the philosophical question IMO. If I have a website interface controlling some remote scope where I set coordinates and click to capture and go to sleep, and tomorrow download an image, this is starting to feel pretty close to just pointing the web browser to astrobin and downloading an image.

by db48x 4mo ago

jjav 4mo ago

> They don’t ride a shuttle up to the Hubble Telescope Right, but that's actual groundbreaking work, capturing image data that has never been captured before. The value there is in the work itself. It's a different game for hobby astrophotography. Unless your budget is enormous, you're not going to every capture a photo that isn't already 10x better somewhere in https://app.astrobin.com/search https://app.astrobin.com/search So what's the point then? I find it can be difficult to answer that question. There really isn't any point, other than the fun of the hobby. Why do I frame a photo of the Orion nebula that I took, which objectively is pretty much junk compared to everything in astrobin.com? Only because it has value to me because I took, but it doesn't really have any other value.

db48x 4mo ago
But surely the photo has the same value to you no matter how much effort it took. Sitting outside in the cold next to your telescope while you take the photo doesn’t make the picture more valuable than sitting inside at your computer taking the photo.
- jjav 4mo ago
  > But surely the photo has the same value to you no matter how much effort it took. Maybe? That's the philosophical question IMO. If I have a website interface controlling some remote scope where I set coordinates and click to capture and go to sleep, and tomorrow download an image, this is starting to feel pretty close to just pointing the web browser to astrobin and downloading an image.