EAA arrives on Astrobin

It is  good to see a new EAA (or whatever you want to call it) community start. Hopefully, many Astrobin users will be interested enough to give it a try.

Errol

I have a question if I have a manual mount and I'm making pictures with an analog film camera but I use a flashlight to look around and avoid bumping into something.... that would be Electronically Assisted Astronomy, right? The flashlight is electrical...

Is this a joke ?

I guess not, there's the choice option when you upload a picture.

Robin Clark - EAA imager:
If you are unfamiliar with EAA, this is a good place to start: https://astronomyconnect.com/forums/articles/an-introduction-to-electronically-assisted-astronomy-eaa.77/
EAA is another way to enjoy our hobby. Camera manufacturers such as Atik, ZWO, Mallincam, and Starlight Xpress all offer cameras and software that cater to folks interested in EAA. If your interests lie elsewhere, please find other forums that are a better match for your interests.

So... a certain Jim Thompson says that what I called Astrophotography now becomes Electronically Assisted Astronomy and that's it? We all have to call it like this now?

Andrea Alessandrelli:
So… a certain Jim Thompson says that what I called Astrophotography now becomes Electronically Assisted Astronomy and that's it? We all have to call it like this now?

If you search folks unfamiliar with "EAA"  there would be  better places to find them, places like facebook and co.

 

Is this a joke ?

I have been on Astrobin for over 2 years and have really enjoyed it.  Some months ago I brought up the topic of EAA on the forum and received some very intelligent comments and discussion.  That is what led me to suggest an area of EAA on Astrobin.  Thus,  I am totally perplexed by the rudeness  or perhaps your feeble attempt at humor.  One would think if you do not know what it is,  you would ask and try to learn something you are not familiar with or just ignore it .   Not sure what the purpose is to criticize something you do not even understand.   Despite all of that,  I'll make an effort to explain what EAA  is and clarify a few points:

1- EAA is not new.  It has been around for many years.  It has also been called live viewing and realtime viewing.

2-  It is very popular at star parties and planetariums since it allows views of many DSOs and solar system bodies within seconds to a few minutes,  making it an ideal approach to educate and have social interaction.

3- It is NOT astrophotography and is not meant to be a form of it or replace it other than you end up with a picture (called an image in AP and a view in EAA).  So, nobody said or implied, "we all have to call it like this now?".  You apparently did not understand what Salvatore wrote.

4- You will find reference to EAA on other astronomy forums, not just FB and co.

5-  It involves using much of the same equipment used in astrophotography but does not involve  long exposures and post-processing.   The camera views are usually short, unguided stacks.

6-  Believe it or not, there are actually people who do both.

I am not sure if any of this will help but my intent was to have a forum where the EAA community can share their ideas and techniques just like the astrophotography community and, god forbid, even learn from each other and enjoy doing it.  I did not anticipate negative or defensive responses.

Bruce Donzanti:
I am totally perplexed by the rudeness  or perhaps your feeble attempt at humor

Sorry about that I didn't mean to upset you or others. Anyway, while I posted a joke on this thread as a sarcastic way to expose my perplexity, I also posted a way more elaborate question on this thread:https://www.astrobin.com/forum/c/astrobin/annoucements/added-support-for-acquisition-type-traditionaleaalucky-imagingdrawing/

I don't understand the backlash against EAA, and it almost smells of elitism, sorry to be blunt. I even added a "Drawings" type because I've been asked many times in the past. My vision for AstroBin is that it is inclusive of all forms of visual representations of astronomical bodies.

"AstroBin is an image hosting website specifically targeted to astrophotographers"
Have I misunderstood something ?

This is unneeded knit-picking IMHO, and a straw man argument if I ever saw one.

Thank you for the answer Salvatore, obviously I really misunderstood something.

sorry extra post ignore this

Hi Don,

Thanks for sharing your experiences doing EAA for Star Party visitors. My Windows 10 laptop doesn’t support Airdrop, although I’ve read that Microsoft will be adding an Airdrop like feature at some point. But I do have a workaround that I plan to use at the Grand Canyon Star Party in June. I can send an image from my PC to my iCloud Photos and then it automatically shows up on my iPhone, and then I can use Airdrop on my iPhone to share with the visitors. Should be fun!

I actually think there is a sharp distinction between traditional astrophotography and what is call EAA.  Traditionally, we take many long (measured in minutes) sub-exposures, calibrate those, stack them, perform rejection and normalization, then post process for hours.  This is usually done with a high cost mount that is very carefully polar aligned and usually guided with a second camera.

EAA on the other hand is very short exposures (milliseconds to seconds), unguided and possibly not even tracked, no subs are touched, but a live stacked result may be post processed.  These usually use a scope that is a visual scope like a big dobsonian but almost always a scope that has a dual function as a visual scope.  By contrast, my scopes don't currently have the ability to be used visually.

This seems to be the perfect middle ground between visual astronomy and astrophotography.

Is it worthy of being on Astrobin?  Of course it is.  Should it be consider separately from long exposure astrophotography?  Certainly, and that is what was put forth.

The only potential confusion I see is that it is very similar to lucky imaging.  However, I think EAA is fundamentally about live stacking whereas lucky imaging involves a video file converted to sub-exposures.  Lucky imaging is about beating the seeing.  EAA is about using visual equipment to shoot deep sky images - and physically see what being capture live in the process.

I think a decent analogy is a track and field meet.  Sprinters and marathoners and hurdlers all compete at the same meet on the same track, but never against each other.  All belong.

Welcome EAA.

Hello All,
My first post here and I'm very new to the Astrobin community. I've really enjoyed looking at all of the photographic work from the folks here. I've recently gotten into EAA and I'm really enjoying it. I'm a very busy person and I don't have time to do a lot of post-processing, but I was very unhappy with my experiences in observational astronomy as well. EAA seems to be a great fit in between for me as it allows me to see many DSOs without the need for a large investment in time or money. I use a ZWO ASI 385 camera, through a filter wheel into a Takahashi 60mm scope. I use SharpCap for live stacking. It's a great way to see quite a few objects in the sky in one night - and with surprising detail for the time involved.

Thanks for providing a place to discuss EAA on Astrobin!