[Greg Priestley]

There was an interesting discussion on this one last night at the ASNSW imaging section meeting, regarding remote (Global Rent-a-scope etc.) scope entries for the SPSP imaging competition.

The words 'in control of the scope' were mentioned more than once for remote imaging entries, but of course quite often an imaging 'job request' is given to a remote scope to complete as and when a time slot is available, not to mention of course when the skies co-operate. Does clicking on a website page to tell a remote setup somewhere in the USA where it's 10am in the morning to image M42 as and when it can really put the user 'in control of the scope?'. I didn't think so...

"I didn't think so" is implying that this is allowed. They are not and that was certainly what was discussed last night. Refer to my original posting.

In exactly the same vain, perhaps I could go big game shark fishing... from my armchair!! Give a shark fisherman a call, tell him to go to sea as and when he can, catch me a shark, bring it back, FedEx it over to me then I would mount it on a board and photograph it to send to the Big Sharks Monthly fishing mag. Might well win 'Catch of the Month' But did I really catch it? Of course I didn't.

But this is banned - again refer to my initial posting. You're probably stretching irrelevant analogies too far.

My 0.02c worth are remote imaging opens up a whole grey area that only serves to completely un-level what should be a flat playing field.

The playing field will never be truly level - down a few paragraphs you say how can you compete with your mere 45K rig - mine's 4K - how could I possibly compete with you then? That's unfair!

A simple rule of 'take the image with equipment you own' could make the playing field completely flat again. No imaging gear? Tough. Can't enter. Life sucks hey?! But buy some kit and have a go next year

Bull****. Sorry for the language but there is no other way to put it. Your saying if I OWN $200K of equipment compared to your mere $45K then that makes it level? And comparing that to someone who owns $4K of equipment, or $1K, is also fair?

I'll hold the mirror up on the second part of your comment and reflect that straight back at you. "Someone has access to better equipment. Tough. Life sucks hey?"

Even with 'subjective judging' that was discussed at the meeting supposedly taking into account the quipment used, images taken using the Hawaiian Foulkes Telescope will always exceed the capabilities of my mere $45k imaging rig, and visual impact is (or at least should be) what wins an imaging competition.

You're mangling what the process is (is your disinformation deliberate?). Just to stop further disinformation being spread, let me explain the process again. All attendees of the SPSP get to vote (this includes the entrants). This happened last year as well for what was called the "People's Choice" award and over 330 people voted. Last year this was done as a bit of an expirement to see whether they obtained consistent results compared to the astro imagers voting (which had a peer based system). This system is being expanded this year so it forms the primary voting pool (entrants will still vote, and these will form a secondary lot of votes that can be used to disambiguiate deadlock fairly).

Attendees of the SPSP can vote using any criteria they like. A lot of attendees last year made comments to me that they really wanted to see the details of the equipment used in order to be able to place some weightings on the images in their own mind (presumably to penalise the people on the super duper equipment which produces a similar result to someone working on more average equipment).

I can't tell you how and what people will take into consideration in forming their opinion, but this year they are being provided with the information relating to the equipment so they can factor this in if they so desire. This is not "subjective judging".

On principle, I won't be fielding an entry to the competition - it's a lot of effort to go to, to pack my truck to a checklist to lug all my kit a few hundred km inland to a dark sky site, set up, balance the rig in all axes, put all the wiring together, meticulously polar align, focus, frame the shot, focus again, autoguide, run the exposures, create darks, wait for dawn and create a good set of flats etc. only to be beaten in the competition by an armchair astronomer with remote access to someone elses superior kit who has to do none of the above effort except collect an email with the .fits data from his email inbox and process it.

I have to say I'm really disappointed to hear that you won't be fielding an entry. Let's see if I can summarise this differently - you're pulling out because the rules potentially allow someone to image on a better setup than you? I am not aware of anyone intending to do this - and there has been no one in this forum who has said that they are intending to do this, but because the rules allow for this you're taking your bat and ball and going home?

Why does everyone seem to think it only has to do with the equipment that determines the end result - it is a component of the final result, as is selecting the object, processing, displaying it, etc.

Thankfully some of the entrants from previous years didn't have this attitude of "I can't possibly win because someone has better equipment" - last year Joe Cauchi won Clusters using film on a home made scope! The year before the overall prize was won by Ken Charlwood with a moon mosaic taken with a point and shoot digital camera through the eyepiece again knocking off all of the more expensive equipment. How is that possible if your assumption that better equipment is the only factor is correct?

I posted my reasoning in the first post of the thread - why don't you go back and post your answers to each of the hypothetical questions I posed - and add new ones in if you think it helps clarify your position - and then email it to me at astroimagingcomp@asnsw.com (this offer is open to everyone) - I want it via email and not posted on this thread as I want to see what each individual person who's response actually is, not just jumping on the bandwagon of someone else without thinking it through and explaining why one thing is OK (own expensive equipment) and another is not (rent expensive equipment).

Note, the rules to 2008 competition will not get changed, but it will add feedback for 2009 (where we can then change the rules once again and have then have a different set of people disagree with them - but that will be somebody elses problem next year to deal with).