Comment by GMoromisato
1 day ago
This is a classic example of a simple idea that no one had ever done before. The execution was complex, of course, and Andrew McCarthy is one of the most skilled astrophotographers. But once you get the idea, a number of people could have done it--but no one ever did.
Makes you wonder what other similar ideas are out there! You can bet McCarthy is already thinking some.
p.s.: My brush with celebrity is that I saw an Andrew McCarthy post on Quora when he was first getting started with astrophotography and gave him a few tips. Always important to remember that everyone was a beginner at one point: https://www.quora.com/Are-there-any-pro-tips-for-astrophotog...
I had an idea for survey planes once. During calibration, they fly grid patterns, basically like a hashmark (#), to get overlapping data for comparison.
Doing that kind of flight at night (makes sense for lidar! not so much for photo..), against a clear sky with at least some stars, and stacking the resulting photos, would give you a grid pattern of green/red/white aircraft running lights in front of the heavens.
The overlapping pattern is! the flight pattern. The overlap is not some calibration artifact, it is the product for any sort of stereo evaluation.
I happen to live at the crossing of two major flight lines, E-W and N-S, so I might actually attempt to do that. Maybe a lot of 1 tenth exposures could be enough. Trial and errors to get started, as usual.
> a number of people could have done it--but no one ever did
My personal definition of "genius," is someone who sees things from a different angle, and can express it in terms we can implement.
It's not doing well on IQ tests; It's that ability to think "outside the box," and, crucially, to express that vision in terms that us normies can use.
I remember Damien Hirst's response to people saying that anyone could have created his "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living"[1].
He'd simply respond with "But you didn't, did you?".
I think that Hirst had a point.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Physical_Impossibility_of_...
It's not like sharks haven't been preserved for display before, they just didn't call it art (barring counting taxidermy as an art form).
Then again, I'm also one of those people who thinks duct taping a banana to a wall is also not art.
There are all types of geniuses. By confining its definition to selected variants of "outside the box", you've defined a new box in a different coordinate system.
I somewhat agree that this isn't the only definition of genius, but this is a pretty important one. If you look back at the most successful scientists, they were not just mad scientists with grand ideas, they were also able to explain their ideas in ways that other people could understand and believe it's correct science.
Turning that back to HN. You may have an amazing startup idea, but you can't do it alone. You need to convince people to join your team, investors to give you funding and customers to buy your product. Yes, even scientists need to be good in sales.
Well … I’m not a genius.
I always did well in IQ tests, but I tend to look at things the way most folks do.
Your advice there is really valuable. Thanks for providing it. I've always wondered how to post-process my night images, and this is a really good guide for that.
Glad it helped! I definitely encourage you to continue practicing post-processing. There is a lot of magic there, and it's fun too.
Love that technique with splitting B&W and colour, doing processing on B&W, then recombining. It's incredibly obvious in hindsight, especially with how common it is in digital art to draw in B&W and colour "in post". A fun little egg of Columbus that I'll be having some fun with over the holidays. Thanks for the link!
> Makes you wonder what other similar ideas are out there!
There are examples of planes silhouetting the sun or moon. There are examples of the ISS. There are examples of planets (Mercury/Venus) crossing the sun, not the moon (obviously). I think someone else mentioned rockets being captured too.
People have also done similar with the moons of other planets. And of course that's how exoplanets have been discovered by looking the effects of a planet crossing between our line of sight of its host star.
FYI some of those amazing shots were also taken by Andrew McCarthy.
https://x.com/AJamesMcCarthy/status/1611128761776492544/
https://x.com/AJamesMcCarthy/status/1479541092693381120/
https://x.com/AJamesMcCarthy/status/1837219848478412935/
https://x.com/AJamesMcCarthy/status/1968658340679921925/
https://www.planetary.org/space-images/the-iss-and-the-moon
https://spaceflightnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Statio...
https://www.universetoday.com/articles/spectacular-image-sho...
Just so we don't all think one person is the only one to do this
4 replies →
What a fantastic little story ha I love this. I need to get back out and do some astrophotography myself… not that I’m nearly as good as either of you (even 7 years ago lol)
indeed!