Statement of Astro Imaging Ethics

May 9, 2025

I wanted to share my own, personal Astro Imaging Ethics. These are right for me - they may not be right for you. But I thought you should know where I am coming from.

My Data

  • My images result from data that I have collected myself. This is not someone else’s data, nor is from some professional observatory, NASA, or some public data set. My projects are solo activities - I do not participate in team efforts, as I see the final image as the results of my personal skill and efforts.

My Gear

  • My Data was collected on My Gear. This means the telescope platform that collected these photons was equipment that I own, assembled and configured myself. I will not use data collected with Telescope.Live or other such for hire, or for-free sources.

My Gear Set Up

  • I set each telescope platform used myself. Balancing, Polar Alignments, PHD2 settings, etc. are all done by myself. (though I may break this some day - see comments at the end)

My Processing

  • I do all of the pre-processing and post-processing myself. My processing decisions, and the look of the final image is under my exclusive control. My images reflects my vision for a particular project.

My Use of AI Tools

  • I will only use advanced AI processing tools that are discrimative in nature only. Right now, the tools that I choose to use are the RC-Astro’s BlurXTerminator, NoseXTerminator, and StarXTermnator. These tools enhance only what is already there in the data.

  • I will NEVER use any Generative AI tools. These, by their nature, change, augment and add elements to the image that were not in the original data set. In my mind there is never good reason to use these types of tools in astrophotography.

Special Note

I live in an area with poor weather and relatively few clear nights. I am also not located in a dark sky site. I am very intrigued in what StarFront is doing. I value the idea of a remote telescope in a dark sky sight that has 300 clear nights a year. If I were to do this, I would have to soften my stance on “My Gear Set Up” to accomdte this. But the remainder of my stated ethics would hold. I would buy and assemble the telescope platform, but I would have to have it set up by the staff of StarFront.