Thanks to all who sent congrats!
As for all those apods... A bit of reality check here... I just think I'm "exploiting" a niche - large widefield views taken with a scope (not with a camera lens) - that it's not particularly challenging (yes, there are challenges, but not too hard to overcome if you spend the time), and not many people are doing (some are, and their work is just stunning), but it's not a particularly cultivated area, and for that reason, it's not hard to come up with FOVs that are, well, rare or unusual... And in a hobby where you can see 2000 images of M31 to realize that from far they all look just alike, stuff that is "different", even just the FOV, sometimes looks attractive (and I think it is)...
Would people notice (including the APOD guys) if I had done just the Rho Op area? They probably got 15 images of that area last week! Some probably at a better resolution, deeper, etc. Would people have liked my image of the Seagull nebula if I didn't include Thor's helmet in the field (and as such, the whole composition formed by the two objects)?
All I'm saying is, you can get the best photographer in the world to take an picture of the Eiffel Tower, but if you tell him "frame it like this":
...his photo may be of high quality but most people probably won't see much difference than a picture taken by a tourist. Not only that, if you saw the same photo one year later, you probably won't remember it.
Now, go yourself to Paris, find the right angle and the right moment, and take a picture like this (none of these are mine!!):
or like this:
or like this:
...people who see the image will remember it if they see it one year later.. In fact,now that you've seen those three images, likely you WILL remember them if you see them one year from now
But it's still "just" a photo of the Eiffel Tower! BTW that last picture I think it won a National Geographic contest.
So to me all those APODs didn't make me a better astrophotographer, but I do acknowledge that the subjects being photographed and the way they were presented caught their attention. So I'll take the credit for "finding" cool FOVs and executing them with more or less fortune, but that's about it. It just so happens that at this moment at least, this widefield imaging is the kind of AP I enjoy doing the most (I have a VC200L in the garage and I fear taking it for a walk in the dark!). Add to this the fact that when people usually "grow up" in this hobby, the challenge becomes going to longer focal lengths, etc. so this widefield niche is often left abandoned to the "newbies".
Anyway, that's what I think. I could have just said "thanks" but honestly I'm a bit overwhelmed and I don't think it's such a big deal, so I hope you don't mind all this verbiage. Pacholka has like 30-40 APODs and they're all landscapes!
