Thread: Scope's-R-us
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Old 19-08-2008, 07:52 AM
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sheeny (Al)
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Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Oberon NSW
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Great thread guys! I've enjoyed watching it grow and change direction... great arguments and examples! It seemed to start simply enough, but perhaps I missed a thread that became the hidden undercurrent relating to competitions. You seem to have a great natural talent for starting these things Peter!

There would seem to be 2 issues woven into this thread. The first is the value of using a remote scope that you buy time on to capture data. In terms of value - that is a personal thing. Peter started all this by simply stating the value wasn't there for him. It's not there for me either at the moment - I would still prefer to spend the money on gear that I can learn to use, and then maybe on sell whehn I've outgrown it.

There's been some good arguments made that buying time has similarities to buying a scope (compared to building your own scope), but like most things. Of course, this all fits into the great grey spectrum from hand building your own scope up to downloading Hubble fits files or SDSS data. This issue is purely one of credit. If you declare what camera and scope (or other data source) you used to capture and what you used to process it, people know where it sits on that spectrum from grass roots to Hubble. There's obviously more QDOS in producing a great image that has more personal involvement.

As for competitions - well that purely depends on the rules for the competition in question. If the rules allow a Hubble data, so be it. If it allows data from a commercial remote scope, so be it.

Ideally, competition rules should reflect reasonable categories to encourage participation and competition in those categories. That's where the skill for the competition organisers comes in... in deciding the categories and rules, to encourage participation.

Al.
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