Taxonomy for Astrophotography and Night Sky Photography
Well this is uber geek territory, but I've used Mind map to draft a taxonomy for astrophotography and night sky photography.
I'm moving more to SmugMug for my online gallery and needed to think about the structure of categories and albums and this just happened along the way. I also hope to use keywords in Lightroom more; my previous attempts have been very ad hoc so I'm hoping a taxonomy like this will give some structure to a keyword set.
I'm interested in any comments/feedback. I'm not bad at generating ideas for how things could/should be organised but I'm not so good at actually using them to keep things organised. Here's hoping this helps a little at least!
Very nice Phil, seems to have all the categories I would've expected.
Like you, trying to be organised with categories and taxonomies is a constant battle
Thanks Mike. I noticed you defined Moon/Long Focal Length in one category in your blog post so used that. Not sure exactly what the best name for it is but it does tend to work as one style.
It seems easy enough to adopt something like this for a keyword set, but choosing albums/categories for SmugMug is still a work-in-progress.
Thanks Mike. I noticed you defined Moon/Long Focal Length in one category in your blog post so used that. Not sure exactly what the best name for it is but it does tend to work as one style.
It seems easy enough to adopt something like this for a keyword set, but choosing albums/categories for SmugMug is still a work-in-progress.
Yep I couldn't figure out a 'better' name for it either. Lack imagination
Do you intend to use the first level as a category and the deeper levels as tags, or will you set it all up as a multi-level category structure?
Yep I couldn't figure out a 'better' name for it either. Lack imagination
Do you intend to use the first level as a category and the deeper levels as tags, or will you set it all up as a multi-level category structure?
I can imagine that using the lowest relevant level as tags/keywords could work.
My current thinking on top-level categories for SmugMug looks like the list below. In brackets are some possible gallery(=album) names inside those categories. And now that I think about it, I may not actually need to use sub-categories. Category-Gallery may be enough for me.
The Sun
The Moon [Phases, Moonrise/Moonset, Eclipses)
Planets [Conjunctions]
Comets, Asteroids & Meteors
Deep Sky [Galaxies, Nebula, Star Clusters]
Widefield [Milky Way, Constellations]
Night Sky Scenes [By place, event??]
Star Trails [??]
Timelapse Videos
EDIT: Also need to add Aurora in at the top level. Also Twilight?
There will also be some other top level categories for daytime stuff like Travel, Landscapes, Personal etc.
You might want to add Planetary Nebulae as a separate sub-category of Deep Sky?
hmm.. is a Planetary Nebula a type of emission nebula? If I add that as a sub-category of emission nebula, what are all the other emission nebula called?
One day when I have my site ready, I'd like to be able to use such a taxonomy too. At the moment, I just have deep space and that divided into the traditional sections such as nebulae, clusters, widefield and so on.
I appreciate the effort you've put into this mind map!
hmm.. is a Planetary Nebula a type of emission nebula? If I add that as a sub-category of emission nebula, what are all the other emission nebula called?
After reading that maybe classes of nebula could be emission, reflection, dark, planetary and SNR? Like most taxonomies, there will be things that don't fit perfectly and room for differences of opinion
Sadly under "style" the categories, photometry, astrometry, spectroscopy, survey and discovery imaging are missing. I suppose that for most people only pretty pics is all that comes to mind. Maybe the BOSS group and others are wasting their time.
Sadly under "style" the categories, photometry, astrometry, spectroscopy, survey and discovery imaging are missing. I suppose that for most people only pretty pics is all that comes to mind. Maybe the BOSS group and others are wasting their time.
Not so fast! On the contrary Terry.. I whipped this up in a few minutes based on the types of photography I'm familiar with and then posted on IIS to get input from people doing other types of photography so that it could be broadened and challenged to work for as many as possible. It was submitted as an early draft needing consultation - it was certainly not presented as a finished piece! I'll add what I can based on your comment but if you want to develop the thinking in more detail I'll add it later. I'm a big fan of BOSS and had certainly considered spectroscopy etc as another ASV member has been doing some recently. But understand that I literally threw this together this afternoon in a few spare moments (based on some notes) before heading out the door in a rush. I welcome your additions and want to include all of that and more!
Terry.. do you see categories such as "photometry, astrometry, spectroscopy, survey and discovery imaging" as sub-categories under 'Astrophotography' or is there a higher level of 'Research/Science/Discovery' that sits at the same level as Astrophotography? What should it be called?
The distinction that has been important for me has been between Astrophotography (complex mounts/scopes etc) and Night Sky Photography (simple tripod/DSLR). On that basis I see the research fields being types of Astrophotography but it could easily be a new category on its own given that the purpose/intent is so different?
I've added a new Style category of 'Scientific Imaging' with sub-categories based on above. Happy to tweak it further based on further input (refer to the MindMeister link above).
And that got me thinking about comet discovery images from SOHO/LASCO etc, so I added some different types of mount.. like Airborne and Space Based. One can dream! See Terry.. it's already better for your input - thanks!
Sorry for being grumpy Phil. Nothing personal.
Just that lots of people had replied and not one thought of any scientific use for our hobby yet that it the exact reason that astronomy is no longer astrology.
Thanks for the update. Very good.
Now it's time for me to take a spectra of the new ?SN in NGC428.
Cheers
Sorry for being grumpy Phil. Nothing personal.
Just that lots of people had replied and not one thought of any scientific use for our hobby yet that it the exact reason that astronomy is no longer astrology.
Thanks for the update. Very good.
Now it's time for me to take a spectra of the new ?SN in NGC428.
Cheers
No worries Terry.. I know the feeling you're describing. I think you're being a little tough on yourself though. Three people had replied after I think fairly quick glances at what I had put together (also no doubt looking at it simply from the point of how they would categorise their own images). I think the fact that it only took the fourth person (you) to contribute the field of scientific imaging to the thread is a great strength of IIS.