Advanced Imaging Conference (USA)

[pfile]

thanks for those talks, rogelio - i realized later that the afternoon sessions were actually 15 minutes longer than the morning, which is kind of strange.

anyway both were productive sessions.

rob

[marekc]

I want to publicly thank Rogelio for his great presentation on PI yesterday, at AIC!

I learned a lot, and a lot of what Rogelio did helped to reinforce things I *thought* I understood about PI workflows, but hadn't been sure about. Seeing a demonstration of the `contour'-based star mask (for star-reduction) was really nice. The demonstration of combining NB and RGB was also great. (There was a simple PixelMath operation that I *should* have known, but seeing RBA demonstrate it was huge.)

Mosaics are one of those things that have always made me think "Oh man, forget that. I have so much to do just to get *single*-frame images to work!" However, after seeing Rogelio demonstrate methods for mosaicking, I am a lot less scared of mosaics.

I should also publicly thank Rogelio, since I probably asked more questions and made more interruptions than anyone else! I owe him a big one for putting up with me :-)

- Marek

[RBA]

Hey Marek! Nah, you don't owe me anything. And if you did, such adulating feedback paid it back in excess! I at least, and I'm sure most people, love getting questions - especially if I have a decent answer! 


It was fun and PixInsight performed really well (one exercise was building a mosaic of 4 panes of 16803 data, no small task for a laptop!)...

[Sean]

I'd also like to thank Rogelio - I learned a couple of great nuggets of information, especially during the extensive DBE demo and discussion. I concluded that I've been oversampling the DBE, and Rogelio really showed the need to try and develop a smooth background. I agree that the contour Star Mask was also great - something I haven't used before.

Also noted - during Ron Wodaski's presentation Sunday Morning, he listed PixInsight first in his list of processing software with "Pro" features. A list that did not include Photoshop BTW.

All in all, a good conference, and it was fun to talk with a lot of PI users. I think I even sold a few copies to newcomers.

[pfile]

yeah Ron put in a good plug. stan moore was sitting next to me and i felt bad but then ron mentioned CCDStack too.

big shocker though that there's no AIC next year. that's worrisome.

rob

[Sean]

Rob,

Yes, the news about no AIC next year is a bit worrying, but I agree with the organizers that the conference needs a bit of a refresh, and I'd be happy to see broader content in upcoming years. I sense that the organizers are also a bit burned out, and maybe need a short break. Let's hope that AIC comes back bigger and even better in 2 years.

Sean

[pfile]

yes... i don't doubt it is a lot of work for the organizers, and it kind of sounds like ken started working again which might contribute to it. 10 years seems like a reasonable place to take a breather.

still unless i'm missing something, the directions to branch out seem somewhat limited... the obvious stuff would be planetary imaging, perhaps more of a call for amateur/scientist collaboration and talks along that front, and some of the more exotic stuff like stan moore is doing. i think he actually mentioned those 3. as it turns out we've already had some 'computational photography' type stuff at AIC with chris ford's talk from 2008. but more of that would be great. with the exception of planetary, though, the dollar investment for people to go off and pursue those topics might be prohibitive.

hopefully ken & team are a hell of a lot more creative than i am!

i know last year ken looked around the room and saw a lot of grey hair and receding hairlines and wondered out loud where the 'young' people are. obviously quality equipment costs big bucks and for most younger people the choice between having a new (used) car and a $10,000 mount is obvious. mostly the hobby seems to belong to retired people with disposable income, which could be a shrinking demographic.

in theory the ingredients for 'cheap' astrophotography are already out there - the 60da, lenses and low-end mounts, so maybe it's just a question of getting the word out there. then again certainly APOD and the hubble heritage team's work is widely seen and appreciated. maybe people just don't know they can make their own images, or maybe if they do, they look at APOD and say "why bother?" i just don't know. but the hobby needs to grow in order to support conferences like AIC, and software such as PI.

maybe this is all a long-winded way of saying that changing the topics that AIC covers may not actually solve the problem of not enough people wanting to come to an astrophotography conference. perhaps just delaying it a year will boost demand enough in the short term, but long term? there are still people out there like josh lake who teach astronomy and astrophotography to kids; maybe the wide availability of cheaper mounts and the 60da will help in this situation going forward.

rob

[RBA]

TWAN-like work was mentioned as well (funny since that's all I did the first 9 months in 2013! -- you can see some of my nightscapes here http://www.flickr.com/photos/deepskycolors/ BTW

This type of work reaches to a larger audience than deep-sky imaging. Worth noting however that despite people who do nightscapes also call themselves astrophotographers, it's a very VERY different discipline, where the choice of the vantage point or the timing has incredibly much more value than virtually anything else.

As for the younger audience, prices would have to go down and still, one can only expect people within certain driving distance to the venue (add the air fare, hotel and extras to the $400 for the conference, and not many young folks would burn that kind of money on a weekend event). There's not much one can do about that, but that's also true for any other subject, not just astrophotography.

Just some random thoughts...

[Ignacio]

How about webcast participation? For a smaller fee, anyone around the world could join and even post questions. I, for one, would participate from Buenos Aires. I bet (virtual) attendance would multiply by 10 or more.

Ignacio

[pfile]

ah, right, the motion-control timelapses that were shown as part of the hubble award lecture were pretty impressive, and i see how 'the public' would be more interested in that.

speaking of motion control, i see that motion control platforms are coming down in price and i wonder if it makes sense to try to adapt one of these stabilization platforms to wide-field DSLR work. your smartphone knows where it is on the planet, and if you platesolve an image from the camera (assuming you can get it focused) the platform should then know where it is pointed and be able to track the stars with no polar alignment necessary. a tool like that might only pull in the TWAN-producing people though, who might end up here anyway. and i'm not sure it would be cheaper than a polarie or whatever.

Ignacio - that is a great idea. i'm sure they will ask for feedback from attendees (as they always do) and i can mention that idea.

rob

[georg.viehoever]

...speaking of motion control, i see that motion control platforms are coming down in price and i wonder if it makes sense to try to adapt one of these stabilization platforms to wide-field DSLR work. ...

Any product names you have in mind?
Georg

[pfile]

there's a kickstarter called "the ghost" - admittedly not "cheap" at $2350. there are a lot of 'hifly' 3-axis mounts on ebay in the $1200 range. there's a really small one for P&S that goes for about $250 on ebay.

i have no idea if these motors can be stepped accurately enough for AP but it seems to me a viable concept at least.

rob

[k]

Hello All,
I have been following the presentations from the previous years in the AIC archives page (http://www.aicccd.com/archive/index.html).
They are all awesome...
Do you know when 2013 presentations will be uploaded? I'm desperately waiting for them

Thanks and Regards,
Keerthi

[RBA]

They usually hold them for about a year.

In 2013 there were only two workshops about PixInsight. One from Warren Keller - and his slides should be up, as I said, within a year or so - and mine, but there's no slides for my workshop since it was a 100% hands-on workshop: me doing stuff with the software, no slides.

Cheers,
Rogelio