New Website Section: Image Gallery

[Juan Conejero]

Hi all,

Today we have started a new project: PixInsight Image Gallery:

http://pixinsight.com/gallery/

As you probably may expect, the gallery is a collection of images entirely processed with PixInsight. But what makes our gallery really different and interesting is the fact that, along with excellent images, it provides a wealth of science outreach material in the form of text and figures authored by professional astronomers.

We have started the gallery with the recent release of an image of NGC 6914 acquired through the 1.23 meter telescope at Calar Alto Observatory, with text written by David Galadí-Enríquez. During the next days we'll be updating the gallery with new entries for older image releases from Calar Alto's website. I want to express my gratitude to the staff at Calar Alto Observatory and Descubre Foundation, for allowing us to adapt their image releases and make our versions available from pixinsight.com.

Enjoy!

[RBA]

This is very nice Juan (and I mean it), but rather than rejoice in the positive aspects of this launch, I'd focus on the one thing I feel it's been missing for quite a while in the PixInsight's web site: amateur images.

As of today, most of what I can see on the PixInsight's web site is:

1) Old stuff using amateur images that, frankly, don't impress anyone anymore.

2) New stuff, amazing images, but all done with professional scopes.

The message one gets from there is that PI is mainly a software for professionals. That's a nice message for the pros, of course. And not a bad thing when some amateur approaches the site feeling "well I sure don't mind using what the pros use!". Although others may feel "well, my data isn't nearly as good as the one from these scopes from Calar Alto, so I guess this is just not for me"... Whatever the message you'd like to convey, that's entirely up to you, but I would welcome something that could tell the casual visitor: PixInsight is a software with professional strength that can also be used quite successfully by those who are anything but pros. Because after all, that's the truth, isn't it?

My two c's...

[Harry page]

Hi

I do agree with RBA  , people first looking at the website images may well feel PI is only aimed at high end users or professionals 

Perhaps a gallery of amateur images or a amateur Pi image of the month ( Not a competition but just a choice ) so the gallery did not become stagnant

To me it always been about getting the most from your data , however good that is 


Regards Harry

[Gary]

Hope you dont mind me putting my 6 pence worth in, Im as about as amatuer as you can get and i love the idea of the gallery professional or otherwise.
The thing i like most about the gallery is the write ups and hints and tips i can pick up from other astronomers.The fact im getting free info from profesionals is a real bonus.
Personally i dont see any reason why you cant have both profesional and amatuer images and write ups/workflows and such in the same gallery.After all its all a source of info.
I accidently stumbled across Pixinsight while looking for decent image processing software for my images and was blown away by the funcionality of pixinsight.
I saw imediatly that it was a dedicated package written by  profesionals for use by profesionals as well as amatuers the forum and harrys videos kinda gave that away for me.
Most people who have evolved to using pixinsight would probably love to learn from the best   

Take care Gary

[Juan Conejero]

This series of images from Calar Alto is just the beginning of the official PixInsight gallery. It happens that the staff at Calar Alto Observatory and Descubre Foundation have kindly given us permission to adapt their photo releases for publishing them on our website, including the whole set of texts and figures. In my opinion, this opportunity is really unique and we definitely cannot overlook it, given the extraordinary quality of the images and the excellent science outreach material that accompanies them.

My intention is to extend the gallery with more images, including new professional images from the CAHA/Descubre/OAUV/DSA alliance, as well as the works of other PixInsight users, which we'll be selecting from this forum's gallery during the next months. All images added to the gallery will continue in the same line we have started now: each image will be released with text and other material authored by a professional astronomer (basically from CAHA and OAUV).

1) Old stuff using amateur images that, frankly, don't impress anyone anymore.

If you refer to the tutorials, I agree that some of them are seriously outdated. For example, I wrote the example on deconvolution with the NGC 5189 Gemini image in 2006, if I remember well, so basically it is completely useless now (and I am ashamed of some things I wrote in this tutorial). The same is true for the example on wavelets with NGC 7000 (2007).

I must update these and other tutorials as soon as possible, but my workload is as huge as always, so unfortunately this will have to wait for a while. Maybe I'll simply remove some of the most outdated tutorials.

However, I'm not sure about what you mean with 'don't impress anyone anymore'. Could you put examples of this?

[Nigel Ball]

Well I'm going to throw my threepenneth into this thread

While I agree with some of what has been said above I feel we must stand back and first be clear on what the Pixinsight website is there to achieve. I think the main purpose of the website is to provide information on the product and to tempt as prospective user to try.
To this end I would suggest

• identifying the key features of the product. Five is about enough, listed as bullet points with a single sentence about the feature which can then be expanded for more
  DBE would be a great example
• some before and after shots coming from both DSLR and CCD
• examples of the helpfulness of the community - quotes. examples of forum posts

How do people get to the website, searches, links, recommendation? This is important as knowing where the majority of hits come from will help determine the level of content required.

Including images on a website can be a tricky thing to do. I'd shy away from 'Image of the Month' and go for maybe a randomised display from a pool of user images.

Finally I would say there needs to be a Quick Start Guide for people who want to try the product. Maybe a tutorial with downloadable images, and process icons to use.

HTH

Nigel