Quote:
Originally Posted by winensky
Great discussion......
....I am happy to stand corrected if I have quoted out of context here and I ma probably splitting hairs but how remote is remote? Is a question of IT here or the price of the rig?
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It's not the remotness of the imaging rig that is in question here, it is the sanctioning, for amateur imaging competitons, of the practise of simply commissioning high quality data collection from paid proffessionals at comercial observatories in order to assemble your entry from it, that is.
There are many ways to look at it of course but as far as many of us are concerned, allowing such techniques in imaging competitions crosses the line by bypasing much of the process that makes up amateur imaging and moves it too far toward the proffessional relm and as such it is not in the true spirit of amateur astronomical imaging.
We feel that a person with a nice imaging rig of any value that "they" setup, operate and painstakingly learn to master so that it provides them with quality image data and then image something really well with it, should not have to compete against someone who has entered an image constructed from essentially perfect data purchased on-line from a proffessional image data collection service that used a 1/2 million robotic telescope to acquire it.
We do not believe that entrants should be able to pay to out-source part of their entry construction, that's all, because doing so comercialises the actual imaging process too much.
You may not agree but that is basically the argument and bone of contention anyway
Cheers
Mike