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points by jefftk 3 days ago | 0 comments
A lot of people are going to look at that manually edited image, think it's a traditional long-exposure photo, and conclude that satellites are much more of a problem for astronomy than they really are.

The photographer made a really neat picture, but Kottke is presenting it with a headline that suggests its something else, and generally not giving enough context (mostly just blockquotes).

[–] Aurornis 3 days ago
Ironically, the same technique used to remove the stars and isolate the satellites could have been used to remove the satellites and isolate the stars.

It would take 100X less effort to remove the satellites.

[–] happytoexplain 3 days ago
Why is that ironic?

You're just pointing out that there are tools to automate this.

[–] Aurornis 3 days ago
The photographer didn’t use automated tools. He edited it manually and said it took a very long time.

It’s ironic because stars outnumber visible satellites by a lot, so exiting out the stars is a lot more work than the satellites.

[–] 1e1a 3 days ago
Why any less effort? Masking the stars out and masking them in should take the same amount of time and effort.
[–] Aurornis 3 days ago
From the article:

> Much of the time was spent painstakingly erasing stars, to reveal the satellites.

Many more stars than satellites in every frame. Erasing a couple satellites at most is quick. Erasing every star in the sky and keeping a couple satellites is not.

[–] StellarScience 3 days ago
Yes, this image is hand-crafted art that looks cool, but in fact both approaches can and have have been automated!

- Astronomers have automated software that anticipates each streak based on the space object catalog and automatically removes satellites from long-exposure wide field-of-view images.

- Those whose job is to track satellites and update the space object catalog have software that anticipates each star location based on star catalogs, and automatically removes stars so they can see where the satellites are.

[–] happytoexplain 3 days ago
Its parameters are very well described and the result is beautiful (visually), interesting, and provocative. Yes, people will misinterpret all sorts of things like this, but I don't know what else the author could have done besides not create it at all, for fear of... these accusations?
[–] Aurornis 3 days ago
Photographer made a cool photo.

Headline writer, a different person, used it to create misleading headlines.

[–] boxed 3 days ago
"Photographer made a cool image"

There I fixed it for you. This isn't a photo in any traditional sense.