Astronomy Section , is it dying out ?

Seems to me that lately other than a few here that the Astronomy section is really dying out compared to a while back . Other than getting burned out from milkyway and landscape night images the real Astronomy image posting has really turned for the worse here on POTN . Other forums I'm on are still striving with many Solar and DSO images . Excitement seems to be gone . Mostly I just see long stories of how to do something that seem to be so technical that I believe it's turning away new people to the field if astronomy . The ones new I have seen in the last 6 months I feel like are getting bored with doing other types of photography they normally do . Most other Pros like wildlife or Family Portrait companies or Pro Sports , hardly any ever change as long as they make money .

Mainly what I'm saying is I think people are loosing interest in astronomy and Old timers are retiring out .

Could it be a seasonal thing?

It has been a slow section, and I feel that a big part of that is due to the technical nature of the subject matter. Not an easy thing to do, and it feels like far more is going on in other communities which are fully dedicated to the topic, rather than where it is a very niche sideline of POTN's main topic.

Personally I'm looking to play around with a bit on 120 black and white film sometime later this fall (When the nights are cooler/less humid, and the sun sets are a more reasonable time), but I do next to no imaging myself due to lack of gear for the kind of thing I truly want to do. In a few more years I'll be on a property of my own outside of town, and start building my personal observatory.


Would be interesting to hear what other people are planning on for the next while.

Or it could be that many who joined early found out how incredibly difficult it is to get a stunning shot and how much additional expensive equipment is sometimes needed. Milkyway and night time landscapes is a good starting point but the next steps require much more investment in both time and $$.

CyberDyneSystems wrote in post #18084665
Could it be a seasonal thing?

Part of it is but really very little cause as seasons change different objects in the Deep Space are available to see . Summer time is mostly star clusters , nebulaes , milkyway . Fall is more Galaxie , star trails , Meteor showers which one coming August 10-12 is the Perseids which last couple years have not been very good but from what I have read on searches is it's suppose to be pretty good this year . Winter time is usually slow cause of the cold weather . During the whole year is Planet time depending where they are located and if they are visible at night or daytime . For a while back earlier this year was a lot of ISS images and a few Eclipses images . But mainly what I was getting at is Astronomy itself as we once knew it to be exciting , is it dying of interest to new people ?

Luckless wrote in post #18084668
It has been a slow section, and I feel that a big part of that is due to the technical nature of the subject matter. Not an easy thing to do, and it feels like far more is going on in other communities which are fully dedicated to the topic, rather than where it is a very niche sideline of POTN's main topic.

Personally I'm looking to play around with a bit on 120 black and white film sometime later this fall (When the nights are cooler/less humid, and the sun sets are a more reasonable time), but I do next to no imaging myself due to lack of gear for the kind of thing I truly want to do. In a few more years I'll be on a property of my own outside of town, and start building my personal observatory.


Would be interesting to hear what other people are planning on for the next while.

That will be great to live out of town providing LP is not a problem in the surrounding area . Building your own Observatory would be very exciting . Hopefully when that all happens for you i'll still be around to see some of your images . Film has been out for quite a while . How do you plan to get it developed ? B&W night images are a real challenge to produce but I do know the feeling of wanting to explore that era . I'm an old film imager and I definitely miss film days !

Celestron wrote in post #18084719
Part of it is but really very little cause as seasons change different objects in the Deep Space are available to see . Summer time is mostly star clusters , nebulaes , milkyway . Fall is more Galaxie , star trails , Meteor showers which one coming August 10-12 is the Perseids which last couple years have not been very good but from what I have read on searches is it's suppose to be pretty good this year . Winter time is usually slow cause of the cold weather . During the whole year is Planet time depending where they are located and if they are visible at night or daytime . For a while back earlier this year was a lot of ISS images and a few Eclipses images . But mainly what I was getting at is Astronomy itself as we once knew it to be exciting , is it dying of interest to new people ?

By seasonal, I meant more to do with POTN members, ie: If you are into nature etc, in the warmer months you may be traveling, and focusing on other subject matter. Those not 100% astro may be less inclined to shoot astro when the weather is what it is now.

So not about what happens in astrological terms seasonally, but what happens to the photographers.

I develop my own film. No darkroom currently, so I'm just scanning negatives, but it works well enough to build up a supply of material to print when I do get around to a proper darkroom setup. I'm not expecting a stellar result from the project, it is merely a "Well why not give it a shot to see what happens" kind of thing.


But there is a rather important 'seasonal' aspect to astronomy: Weather and time.
Right now the sun isn't setting till 8:40pm tonight. Probably can't really start getting good data till 10, maybe even 11pm, and then you get to deal with the humidity and insane volume of condensation. Plus thermal distortions in the air giving generally poor seeing. Lets not forget about the frequent cloud cover and rapidly moving thunder storms that are common for some.

Oh, plus the black flies and mosquitoes...

Compare that to the middle of January up here, where I could potentially get out of the office a little early on a day with good weather, grab a quick dinner, and be setup in dark conditions by 6pm ready to image. Some minor awkwardness with risk of frost bite and having to be extra careful handling frozen parts, but things can be absolutely beautiful and perfect for imaging. And the best part? No bugs! All the little suckers are frozen solid under a metre or more of snow...

Heya,

I think it's more because there's simply bigger communities elsewhere for this niche of photography. This primarily was a Canon camera forum for a long time. Now it's sort of global, but it's still very much a dSLR/dSLM forum more than anything, with genres of the use of those kinds of cameras. A lot of AP doesn't use camera lenses, dSLR's, etc, so it's actually hard to fit it into a lot of the categories around here, other than this board. Most of the AP folk who wander into his board are looking to use their dSLR and a fast wide lens to do wide field stars and milky way for the first time. So a lot of people who really get into AP probably migrate to another place with more people dedicated to the subject, like Cloudy Nights or other very popular, very active boards that have a lot of people dedicated to this.

I'm on both and I used to post regularly here in the A&C board, but there really are only a few people here that still have something to say or produce stuff, but they too are also on another board as I see them there too.

Very best,

Luckless wrote in post #18084737
I develop my own film. No darkroom currently, so I'm just scanning negatives, but it works well enough to build up a supply of material to print when I do get around to a proper darkroom setup. I'm not expecting a stellar result from the project, it is merely a "Well why not give it a shot to see what happens" kind of thing.


But there is a rather important 'seasonal' aspect to astronomy: Weather and time.
Right now the sun isn't setting till 8:40pm tonight. Probably can't really start getting good data till 10, maybe even 11pm, and then you get to deal with the humidity and insane volume of condensation. Plus thermal distortions in the air giving generally poor seeing. Lets not forget about the frequent cloud cover and rapidly moving thunder storms that are common for some.

Oh, plus the black flies and mosquitoes...

Compare that to the middle of January up here, where I could potentially get out of the office a little early on a day with good weather, grab a quick dinner, and be setup in dark conditions by 6pm ready to image. Some minor awkwardness with risk of frost bite and having to be extra careful handling frozen parts, but things can be absolutely beautiful and perfect for imaging. And the best part? No bugs! All the little suckers are frozen solid under a metre or more of snow...

Yeah, that was the sort seasonal aspects I was thinking of. (though bugs I had not thought of)

gjl711 wrote in post #18084673
Or it could be that many who joined early found out how incredibly difficult it is to get a stunning shot and how much additional expensive equipment is sometimes needed. Milkyway and night time landscapes is a good starting point but the next steps require much more investment in both time and $$.

True MW and landscape are a good starting point but it should be able to spark interest to want to do more deeper imaging hopefully . I've seen a lot spend a good chunk of money on those iOptron type tracking mounts and a new high dollar lens as well as a high dollar camera to use . The old astronomy way is buying a telescope with a Go-To mount and just buying attachments for their DSLR cameras to attach to the scope with and take DSO images of planets , nebulaes , star clusters and galaxies . Some go as far as buying dedicated CCD imagers which granted are not for any other use than astronomy imaging . But for cost wise I see some have $1000.00 - $3000.00 DSLR cameras , then pay from $400.00 - $ 2000.00 for a good lens and another $500.00 - $1000.00 for a tracking mount . Now add that up and that's $1900.00 - $6000.00 for equipment and you cannot have a night of just sitting and viewing the night sky like just observing a galaxie or nebulae or beautiful star cluster . I'd hate to sit and look through my viewer of my camera even with a 600mm lens and try to observe the night sky . As to where for $2000.00 a person can buy a good Go-To scope and mount , camera attachments and be able to image the night sky close up or just have a night to look at some galaxies , star clusters or even try splitting and seeing double stars in our universe .

There is one person for sure I know and maybe two here on this forum that have bought a scope as I have mentioned and are taking some great images . Yes it's a learning curve and has to be ones interest to be dedicated enough to go further but the rewards are well worth it ! The main purpose tho is to have fun doing it but when things start getting too technical and having to read and study and spend a lot of time and money on software to develop these images then I believe this is causing interest to drop . The old way is by trial and error and producing the best you can for presentation but when it gets' sophisticated the fun goes away . When you have to spend all your time to understand what your reading sometimes results turn out good IF the person doesn't loose interest before they produce results .

If a person already has a camera that will attach to a scope half that funding is already conquered . And the ones that have or want to buy a iOptron tracking mount would take more interest into getting nebulae and perhaps galaxie and star cluster shots that could at least spark more interest into doing more DSO imaging .

Luckless wrote in post #18084737
I develop my own film. No darkroom currently, so I'm just scanning negatives, but it works well enough to build up a supply of material to print when I do get around to a proper darkroom setup. I'm not expecting a stellar result from the project, it is merely a "Well why not give it a shot to see what happens" kind of thing.


But there is a rather important 'seasonal' aspect to astronomy: Weather and time.
Right now the sun isn't setting till 8:40pm tonight. Probably can't really start getting good data till 10, maybe even 11pm, and then you get to deal with the humidity and insane volume of condensation. Plus thermal distortions in the air giving generally poor seeing. Lets not forget about the frequent cloud cover and rapidly moving thunder storms that are common for some.

Oh, plus the black flies and mosquitoes...

Compare that to the middle of January up here, where I could potentially get out of the office a little early on a day with good weather, grab a quick dinner, and be setup in dark conditions by 6pm ready to image. Some minor awkwardness with risk of frost bite and having to be extra careful handling frozen parts, but things can be absolutely beautiful and perfect for imaging. And the best part? No bugs! All the little suckers are frozen solid under a metre or more of snow...

You being from Canada are you aware of this dedicated astronomy forum : http://ukastroimaging.​co.uk/forums/index.php

CyberDyneSystems wrote in post #18084727
By seasonal, I meant more to do with POTN members, ie: If you are into nature etc, in the warmer months you may be traveling, and focusing on other subject matter. Those not 100% astro may be less inclined to shoot astro when the weather is what it is now.

So not about what happens in astrological terms seasonally, but what happens to the photographers.

Oh I understand what your getting at but I wasn't talking about that kind of seasonal era , sorry . I'm talking about the general interest of nightsky observing and what is available during different season of the year at night .

I know you talk about bugs and crawling creatures of day and night and weather conditions . But honestly doesn't everyone fight those things even in daytime ? I know when I get around a lake for wildlife photography I fight heat , bugs and worry about snakes ! Those are just part of the environment if you want to get out and image .

Personally I find bugs to be that much more of a pain when you're trying to move around an expensive setup of gear in pitch black. And the level of precision needed for astronomy vs photographing a deer in a field is rather different. If you flinch and bump things while lining up a shot of wildlife, well then you just correct and carry on. Bump something out of alignment on your scope? Well, there goes half an hour or more while you confirm you're still tracking correctly.

And as I said, no bugs bother me in the middle of January, other than the odd software one at least.


I had seen that forum, but I don't think I ever actually signed up for it. Sadly I'm still in the "Would like to get into that, but budgets..." group. I want to do more astronomy, but at this point I am mostly working and helping other people with their gear, or getting to use stuff from various universities and research programs.


The local sidewalk astronomy group here has been doing a lot with solar astronomy lately, and honestly it is getting to the point where I'm considering changing my goal and focus to that. Would still be able to do work with it in the summer while not having everything drench in dew.