Top Pick & IoT - critics - Forums

Topic starter

Nov 20, 2023

Hi all,

I see that recently mostly remote observatories get the prize, quite boring. Here is my idea to get more motivation to the standard astrophotographers:

Like in sports, we should separate the disciplines. A separation of remote observatories from the IoT process would be the first step. They could then "play" in their own league. Additionally we could implement a scheme which distinguishes different sort of equipment.

If this is too much effort, then an election of the paying users for a picture of the month or a picture of the year would be more ueseful than selecting images by a hidden jury. This would also remove workload from the jury, because they have nothing to do but evaluate the regular votings.

What do you think? Looking forward to comments.

Regards,

Klaus

Engaging

Dan Kearl

Nov 20, 2023

I just looked at the Top picks, about half were regular people shooting in Urban areas.
Do better and you might get one.

Tyrel Smith

Nov 20, 2023 · Edited: Nov 20, 2023

Don't really have any comment on your suggestions, but just wanted to point out the stats on IOTD between backyard imagers and remote observatories. IOTD percentages are almost dead even between these two groups. Now, to be fair according to the table below, the Own Remote Observatory category achieves this with 8% of total submissions, vs Backyard with almost 70% of submissions.

As a side note - I'm impressed that the Traveller category has such a strong showing in IOTD. That seems like it takes considerable dedication to pack up your gear, travel to a imaging location, and collect enough data to produce a high quality image. Hats off to all you Travellers out there!

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Dan Kearl

Nov 20, 2023

"As a side note - I'm impressed that the Traveller category has such a strong showing in IOTD. That seems like it takes considerable dedication to pack up your gear, travel to a imaging location, and collect enough data to produce a high quality image. Hats off to all you Travellers out there!"

I live in a city in Bortle 8 and shoot whenever I can, but packing up the equipment and driving a few hours to set up and camp and shoot in Bortle 2 a few times a year is half the fun of this hobby for me.

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Quinn Groessl

IOTD Staff

Nov 20, 2023

more ueseful than selecting images by a hidden jury

https://welcome.astrobin.com/iotd

The people who select them are all listed.

Oscar H.

Nov 20, 2023 · Edited: Nov 20, 2023

What I want different is a IOTY (image of the year) shown every New Year. And it's chosen through some kind of public voting system done every December, picked from current IOTDs. What do you guys think of this idea? Maybe some modifications to my description…

Also I was thinking, unlike IOTD which changes every day, the IOTY will be shown as a small image on the Astrobin homepage for the entire 12 months of the year until the start of the next year.

Engaging

Timothy Martin

Nov 20, 2023 · Edited: Nov 20, 2023

This has been discussed to death both publicly and also privately among the IOTD staff. Once you start making categories, there's no end to it. It starts with remote imagers and backyard imagers each having their own categories. Then it morphs to "cheap" gear versus "expensive" gear. Then what about travelers, or people who buy data, or people whose back yards are in cities versus people who live under dark skies? Old people and young people. Newbies and experienced astrophotographers. OSC versus mono. Broadband versus narrowband. There are no sensible boundaries, and no set of categories would may anyone happy. And if you had categories, how would you present the winners? There's only space for one banner at the top of the home page. This isn't Amazon.

My feeling is this: IOTD is the best of the best, regardless of how rural, urban, remote, rich, or poor the photographer is. It's just the best image picked that day. That's all. It's not perfect. Nothing can be. But it's damn good and has done a lot for this site and for the pursuit of astro imaging in general. If you need encouragement, talk to your mom. If you need honest criticism, talk to your wife. If you need motivation, talk to your football coach. And if you need unwavering praise for anything and everything you do, get a dog.

Having said all that, which seems pretty harsh, I will also say that there has been discussion about more ways to provide people with constructive criticism and feedback and to set up some kind of reward system based on specific categories of achievement. I'm not privy to any details, and I know of no timeframe. But the concerns you've expressed are common and have not fallen on deaf ears. I know steps have already been taken to provide a place and a procedure for people to ask for constructive criticism in the forum. So you might take a look there and see whether it's helpful to you.

And also consider whether winning a daily contest on a website should play much of a role in whether you want to pursue an avocation that is difficult, expensive, and time consuming. I hope there are many far more important reasons to do this. There are for me.

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Arun H

Frequent contributor

Perfect post

Nov 20, 2023

Timothy Martin:
This has been discussed to death both publicly and also privately among the IOTD staff. Once you start making categories, there's no end to it. It starts with remote imagers and backyard imagers each having their own categories. Then it morphs to "cheap" gear versus "expensive" gear. Then what about travelers, or people who buy data, or people whose back yards are in cities versus people who live under dark skies? Old people and young people. Newbies and experienced astrophotographers. OSC versus mono. Broadband versus narrowband. There are no sensible boundaries, and no set of categories would may anyone happy. And if you had categories, how would you present the winners? There's only space for one banner at the top of the home page. This isn't Amazon.

My feeling is this: IOTD is the best of the best, regardless of how rural, urban, remote, rich, or poor the photographer is. It's just the best image picked that day. That's all. It's not perfect. Nothing can be. But it's damn good and has done a lot for this site and for the pursuit of astro imaging in general. If you need encouragement, talk to your mom. If you need honest criticism, talk to your wife. If you need motivation, talk to your football coach. And if you need unwavering praise for anything and everything you do, get a dog.

Taking something to an absurd extreme seems to me a convenient excuse for not making any change at all. Surely there is some logical middle ground between the current system and an infinite number of categories.

The only benefit the current IOTD system has for me is that it promotes unique images I might otherwise have missed. The recent Ganymede surface map and the green flash image fall in that category. Otherwise, after seven years, I feel completely disconnected from the IOTD and generally give most of them no more than a passing glance. Not all us want to set up remote observatories in Chile and there is surely some benefit to promoting images taken with more modest equipment to act as inspiration to those with modest means and objectives.

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Kevin Morefield

IOTD Staff

Perfect post

Nov 20, 2023

Arun H:
Taking something to an absurd extreme seems to me a convenient excuse for not making any change at all. Surely there is some logical middle ground between the current system and an infinite number of categories.

Those are not absurd extreme examples - they are the ones there were suggested in past beatings of this horse. Some backyards are Bortle 2 and some are Bortle 8. Some backyards have 10" apertures and some have 90mm.

Interestingly, one of the most successful guys on Astrobin is @Steeve Body who shoots mostly with modest equipment from his city backyard. He beat my images from Chile in the recent competition in Australia.

Lastly, your recent WR134 image was excellent!

Kevin

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Ruediger

Nov 20, 2023

Hi all,

I see that recently mostly remote observatories get the prize, quite boring. Here is my idea to get more motivation to the standard astrophotographers:

Like in sports, we should separate the disciplines. A separation of remote observatories from the IoT process would be the first step. They could then "play" in their own league. Additionally we could implement a scheme which distinguishes different sort of equipment.

If this is too much effort, then an election of the paying users for a picture of the month or a picture of the year would be more ueseful than selecting images by a hidden jury. This would also remove workload from the jury, because they have nothing to do but evaluate the regular votings.

What do you think? Looking forward to comments.

Regards,

Klaus

Hello Klaus,

I support your idea, but unfortunately there is no interest at all to change and improve something in this direction. This is something I have learned from some past discussions.

After I have seen, that buying data and only processing it, is sufficient, I have joined the user group who boycott the submission process. Some friends removed the IOTD components of the page and I have adopted that. This helps, since what you do not see, is not bothering you. Unfortunately on mobile devices this is not so easy.

CS
Rüdiger

Timothy Martin

Nov 20, 2023

Kevin Morefield:
Arun H:
Taking something to an absurd extreme seems to me a convenient excuse for not making any change at all. Surely there is some logical middle ground between the current system and an infinite number of categories.

Those are not absurd extreme examples - they are the ones there were suggested in past beatings of this horse. Some backyards are Bortle 2 and some are Bortle 8. Some backyards have 10" apertures and some have 90mm.

Interestingly, one of the most successful guys on Astrobin is @Steeve Body who shoots mostly with modest equipment from his city backyard. He beat my images from Chile in the recent competition in Australia.

Lastly, your recent WR134 image was excellent!

Kevin

Not even all remote sites are equal. My remote scope is at DSW in New Mexico—where the seeing is never better than about twice what you average in Chile. Do I get to have a “Remote Site with Worse than Atacama Seeing” category? I got my first IOTD—after 342 tries—using a C11 in my Bortle 8 back yard. And even though I have a remote scope, I continue to shoot in the back yard with my entry level Z61 refractor and my C11. If I was banking on winning Astrobin awards, I’d be a pretty skinny dude instead of the lard ass that I am.

Doug Struble and Chad Leader are also among the very best. And they do it in Bortle 8s with very modest gear—a Stellarvue refractor and a C8, respectively.

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Aaron H.

Nov 20, 2023

Even if IOTD is out of reach, the Top Pick and Top Pick Nomination awards are still useful recognition.

Personally, I’m a total amateur with cheap equipment, and I’ve only been publishing images for a short while, but I was happy to get a couple of Top Picks with images shot from my backyard using a $300 Newt and older-generation OSC camera.

IOTD is probably out of reach with my modest gear, but I’m enjoying trying.

In the end, if I don’t manage to reach the standards of some of the astonishing images taken by users with their PlaneWaves in the Atacama, then that’s no surprise and hardly disappointing. The challenge is just doing the best we can with the equipment we have.

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Steeve Body

IOTD Staff

Nov 20, 2023 · Edited: Nov 20, 2023

Thanks a lot @Kevin Morefield for the mention! In deep sky imaging, which is what I'm really into, I believe the key to nailing a great final image is mainly about choosing the right targets for your gear and your location. It's also about getting your framing right, planning your acquisition and integration time well, and mastering your data processing.

It's quite impressive how you can achieve great quality with just basic equipment in areas with light pollution, especially if you use the right filters and processing techniques.Astrobin has been super helpful for me to research targets and see what others have achieved. It's great for setting a benchmark for what's possible and how far I can push my gear.I've been fortunate to receive a few IOTD and Top Picks for my images, though not every image I thought was great received recognition.

There's definitely a bit of subjectivity involved, and sometimes you might be too close to your own work to judge it objectively. High-end observatory gear and dark skies do contribute a lot to good data, but the advancements in modern processing tools have really helped bridge the gap.

Regarding the 'Image of the Day' selections, I'm okay with how it's currently handled. Astrobin sees a lot of uploads every day, including quite a large volume of average images from beginners who might not have honed their processing skills yet. These new imagers usually start with modest equipment, which is expected, but I believe than more often than not it is their processing skills that really impact the image quality the most... so I'm not certain how much conclusion we can really draw from the IOTP/TP stats mentioned earlier in this thread.

I did notice some excellent images not getting to the 'Top Pick Nomination' stage from time to time. I reached out to @Salvatore Iovene for some insight and to discuss potential improvements. He's really open to feedback, so I encourage anyone with suggestions to get in touch with him. He has done a lot to improve the process despite having a limited amount of bandwidth to deal with this all by himself. There have been some recent changes to make the process fairer. For instance, images that aren't viewed by 80% of submitters get automatically resubmitted, ensuring every image gets a fair chance. The ‘i’ info button on submitted images, showing voting stats, is a great feature! (and should ideally apply to all images, not just the nominated ones...?)

As Tim mentioned, this topic might have been discussed quite a bit, but it's always useful to revisit and have a constructive conversation about these things from time to time

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Arun H

Frequent contributor

Perfect post

Nov 20, 2023 · Edited: Nov 20, 2023

Kevin Morefield:
Those are not absurd extreme examples - they are the ones there were suggested in past beatings of this horse. Some backyards are Bortle 2 and some are Bortle 8. Some backyards have 10" apertures and some have 90mm.

Hello Kevin,

Thank you for your response. I was a member of the IOTD staff for three years before leaving since I didn't feel I could do justice to the responsibility and put in the time needed at this stage in my life. So I am familiar with the discussions. My pushback is that the argument you and Timothy put forward is one that simply closes off all discussion. Is the current IOTD system the best it can be, are we so sure that there is no change that can be made to better serve the community that it merits using this argument to close off any debate on improvement? After all, the community has changed a LOT in the last few years. On the one hand, you have people who have the passion to set up personal remote observatories at Bortle 1 sites at high altitude, on the other, people who struggle through Bortle 8 light pollution in their backyards. Is it possible to get good images under both conditions ? Absolutely! But the statistics and physics would show clearly where the bias lies.

Aside from some form of reward to the imager that the IOTD/TP/TPN status may (or may not) give. When I research a target, I will filter something by Top Picks and Top pick Nominations to get a sense of what a good image should look like. If the current system increasingly recognizes images taken with highly sophisticated equipment at dark sites, people will have fewer reference images easily accessible that are a match for more common conditions.

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Salvatore Iovene

Admin

IOTD Staff

Exemplary contributor

Nov 20, 2023

Steeve Body:
The ‘i’ info button on submitted images, showing voting stats, is a great feature! (and should ideally apply to all images, not just the nominated ones...?)

You can access the same data via the "View" menu -> IOTD/TP Stats on all your submitted images, not just the ones in the queue and the ones with an award. I didn't want to leave the (i) badge on by itself because for many people it would be there on all images.

In any case, just as a reminder, the info in that modal dialog is private to you for your own images.

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Anderl

Nov 20, 2023

Salvatore Iovene:
Steeve Body:
The ‘i’ info button on submitted images, showing voting stats, is a great feature! (and should ideally apply to all images, not just the nominated ones...?)

You can access the same data via the "View" menu -> IOTD/TP Stats on all your submitted images, not just the ones in the queue and the ones with an award. I didn't want to leave the (i) badge on by itself because for many people it would be there on all images.

In any case, just as a reminder, the info in that modal dialog is private to you for your own images.

Hey Salvatore,

do you mean the graph section?
at least on my mobile phone i can’t see an iotd section.

Salvatore Iovene

Admin

IOTD Staff

Exemplary contributor

Nov 20, 2023

do you mean the graph section?
at least on my mobile phone i can’t see an iotd section.

Salvatore Iovene

Admin

IOTD Staff

Exemplary contributor

Nov 20, 2023

Yes, @Andi, it appears that that menu is not available on mobile at the moment!

Anderl

Nov 20, 2023

Salvatore Iovene:
Yes, @Andi, it appears that that menu is not available on mobile at the moment!

Thx salvatore.

cs
andi

kv54

Topic starter

Nov 20, 2023

Hi all,

I did expect that there were already discussions before. Nevertheless I think that from time to time it is necessary to talk about this topic. Thanks for the feedback.

CS,

Klaus

Mark Ellis (PhoenixAstro)

Nov 20, 2023

Dan Kearl:
I just looked at the Top picks, about half were regular people shooting in Urban areas.
Do better and you might get one.

I agree, I'm not Pro and 90% of my images are from my own backyard in a B-8 sky and I have 2 Top Picks and 3 Nominations thus far. Seeing others get these awards inspires me to do the best I can with the hand I'm delt with.

Mark Ellis

Mark Ellis (PhoenixAstro)

Nov 20, 2023

Aaron H.:
Even if IOTD is out of reach, the Top Pick and Top Pick Nomination awards are still useful recognition.

Personally, I’m a total amateur with cheap equipment, and I’ve only been publishing images for a short while, but I was happy to get a couple of Top Picks with images shot from my backyard using a $300 Newt and older-generation OSC camera.

IOTD is probably out of reach with my modest gear, but I’m enjoying trying.

In the end, if I don’t manage to reach the standards of some of the astonishing images taken by users with their PlaneWaves in the Atacama, then that’s no surprise and hardly disappointing. The challenge is just doing the best we can with the equipment we have.

Like you I've started off with budget equipment, Still have and use, but I have also worked my way up to more advanced equipment. It's not the equipment or area that makes an IOTD or APOD, It's what you do with that data. One of these day's i'll hit that magic lotto button and get one from my nice B-8 sky's

Just have to keep trying.

kv54

Topic starter

Nov 24, 2023 · Edited: Nov 24, 2023

Quinn Groessl:
more ueseful than selecting images by a hidden jury

https://welcome.astrobin.com/iotd

The people who select them are all listed.

Hi Quinn,

thanks for clarification. But there are open questions:

Was this jury elected by the community, i.e. by the users who pay per year?
If yes, it is ok. If not, why not? Who decides, who is member of the jury?
When will the jury be elected again, if so?

Just a little hint: In every listed company, the shareholders decide where things go. Neglecting this principle is not good, I feel. And it isn't democratic by the way.

So you might argue that the simple paying users do not have enough experience to elect the jury. But that cannot be proven in the end...

CS,

KV

Dan Kearl

Nov 24, 2023

Quinn Groessl:
more ueseful than selecting images by a hidden jury

https://welcome.astrobin.com/iotd

The people who select them are all listed.

Hi Quinn,

thanks for clarification. But there are open questions:

Was this jury elected by the community, i.e. by the users who pay per year?
If yes, it is ok. If not, why not? Who decides, who is member of the jury?
When will the jury be elected again, if so?

Just a little hint: In every listed company, the shareholders decide where things go. Neglecting this principle is not good, I feel. And it isn't democratic by the way.

So you might argue that the simple paying users do not have enough experience to elect the jury. But that cannot be proven in the end...

CS,

KV

The website is privately owned.. I have no idea why you think paying a yearly rate to post images here makes one a "shareholder".

kv54

Topic starter

Nov 26, 2023

H Dan,

I agree, the paying users are not sharedholders.

But without the income from the paying users, the site could not be run in that professional way. From this follows that they should determine the jury or vote for the IOTD. I do not say that this democratic process is a must, but I feel that the acceptance would be much higher then.

Best,

Klaus

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