Pier-8 is becoming a Syndicate pier

Asking on behalf of anyone who might be a bit shy to want to ask awkward questions. 

1) Delivering data immediately after collection. Why? 

If expecting a product consisting of several sets of components which together combine together, (flat packs), it's not the norm to receive the sets individually. Having them all delivered together just the once makes it easier and requesting replacements for missing or damaged parts a one time thing. Also, is there a ruling as to who should submit replacement jobs, the originator or any member? 

2) Thou shalt only request the number of hours determined by the SNR calculator!

Okay, just as long as the job can at the time be submitted more than once in order that the total number of hours the member wants can be fulfilled. How someone wants to apportion their time allocation ought to be up to them. I would be very, very interested to know what the calculator comes up with on some of "Steve's Specials" that were put through in the past. As I'm sure that Steve did, some people place quality ahead of quantity. If there is the intention to eventually make some of these datasets available to purchase in the future, then surely these should be a step above the minimum. I could go on and will! How will the number of hours and sub lengths be determined for narrowband filters particularly on targets not available to the calculator? 

Finally, it's interesting when you look at the Top Picks every day on Astrobin as I try to do. On particularly dim targets using narrowband filters you'll often see the use of 600s and occasionally 900s exposures even when using modern cmos cameras. Obviously these are taken from where there is no or extremely little aircraft traffic, such as at our site in Spain. I appreciate that for good reasons we are limited to a maximum of 300s, but it's the total integration time needed to produce a top quality image by the majority of us that should be allowed. 

I agree that something needed doing to stop overly long jobs being submitted, but surely that is now covered by the limit imposed on members as to the number of hours they have. I just think that the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction and hope that some of what has been mentioned will be taken into account. 

Thank you for taking the time to read this. 

Cheers and CS, 

Ray (aka Mr. Grumpy as Steve would say) 

It's pretty simple in reality, Ray, it's a new style syndicate that's different to our older ones, using almost 100K in equipment and has new rules

The only way to 100% control as an individual is to spend the money on your own equipment, put it in a dark location and pay the hosting fee yourself @ €300-800 per month

Or

You can join a syndicate with a couple of simple rules that benefit the collection of data and the members to get the most out of a pier for everyone without spending, 100K

To answer a couple of your questions however

1, it's shared every day is so data can be checked every evening and during our less than ideal times (winter) can be resubmitted quickly. it's not needed so much from late spring to winter but it's still advantageous for many more reasons than this, including resource limitations for storage etc

2, The calculator is not even live yet so you don't quite know how it works in reality, so it's conjecture on your part that it won't be weighted towards a top quality data set that does not hit the law of diminishing returns. There is no perfect solution for everything but we will get as close as we can and yes common sense will need to be used with some objects and member discussion that may or may not involve admin to decide on some objects

3, 900s exposures on a Kepler sensor are utterly pointless as every image would be blown out, Lum only require 30/60s on most targets as it says on the equipment page. It simply does not need ridiculously long data sets to get a very high quality dataset. We do not make recommendations for imaging times by licking our finger and holding them in the air Ray, we test our cameras on site in order to find what they require to get the best out of them

This is not a Chinese video sensor based camera, the Kepler package is a 30k a pro camera remember!

Final thoughts - communication is the key

The new syndicates will require more input from the members to choose what jobs go in the pier over each QTR in order for it to work well, they need to make suggestions and agree & sort data retakes etc. So member communication is a must

The member base may decide on less but higher quality sets or more data medium quality sets, who knows what they will decide but they will have to talk in order to decide what they do won't they :)

Suffices to say Roboscopes will not be doing any more "old style" syndicates I am afraid, those days are over, we may amend a little how the "new style syndicate" are run as we learn and adapt but the bones of it are already in place I feel

At the end of the day it's a major bargain at €120 per month to get top quality data from a dark location using very serious/expensive equipment, members will either join or they wont :)

HTH

Steve

Thanks for the reply Steve, duly noted.

This was about the running of all syndicates in the future and not specifically about pier 8 with the Kepler camera. Incidentally, a very few images with that camera have been taken using 600s exposures, and whilst I'd agree 300s would have easily sufficed, the images weren't blown out! More importantly I accepted that we are limited to 300s and that it was the overall integration time that's important. Those 600s and 900s examples I mentioned were taken using cameras like the asi2600mm. 

Trying to calculate exposure times is a can of worms and you cannot beat using prior actual results. I think that something like the the Compendium produced by Gary Imm could be very helpful.

Incidentally, how did installing own equipment at a cost of up to €800 a month end up later on in your reply as, "by joining a Syndicate.... without spending 100k"?

I hope that others are not put off responding to what I've questioned either negatively or positively. 

Sometimes your responses are disappointing, often as those used as described by The Straw Man argument. Very defensive. 

Cheers, 

Ray 

Thanks for the reply Steve, duly noted.

This was about the running of all syndicates in the future and not specifically about pier 8 with the Kepler camera. Incidentally, a very few images with that camera have been taken using 600s exposures, and whilst I'd agree 300s would have easily sufficed, the images weren't blown out! More importantly I accepted that we are limited to 300s and that it was the overall integration time that's important. Those 600s and 900s examples I mentioned were taken using cameras like the asi2600mm. 

Trying to calculate exposure times is a can of worms and you cannot beat using prior actual results. I think that something like the the Compendium produced by Gary Imm could be very helpful.

Incidentally, how did installing own equipment at a cost of up to €800 a month end up later on in your reply as, "by joining a Syndicate.... without spending 100k"?

I hope that others are not put off responding to what I've questioned either negatively or positively. 

Sometimes your responses are disappointing, often as those used as described by The Straw Man argument. Very defensive. 

Cheers, 

Ray 

Ray

it wasn't meant defensively, as I have nothing to defend. I was simply stating our reasoning, albeit perhaps with my own direct approach to things. Sorry you're disappointed. I was simply trying to nail down where we were going without having to explain ourselves repeatedly.

On top of that, as we were on the Pier-8 syndicate section rather than a generic one, one would have presumed this is what we were discussing settings wise.

There is over 90K in equipment value for Pier-8 plus the cost of its place in the observatory, which a member gets to be part of for €120 per month

I will expand on our meaning or syndicates

Syndicates are a team approach system meant to make everyone happy including Roboscopes, It's not about one person who wants to do 75 hours on X object or 1200s exposures on Y object. We have set up a generic pier system with settings that enable all members to get very good data at the lowest possible cost whilst being part of a team of like-minded people with a particular goal. Whilst it is flexible, as we are also so can adapt to suit what that team requires. It is not the same as hosting, where you get to do what, when and how you want yourself.
This is what hosting is for, hosting comes with cost implications that have to be considered and taken into account when compared to a syndicate

With syndicates, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one.

Whilst on the subject of 900s exposure etc. A lot of people doing 70-100 & 200 hour exposure times on objects with 900s are researching SNR's, not taking an image of M31 or suchlike and their needs are different to people taking standard style images, Also, a lot of them are either hosting their own equipment or are lucky enough to live in a bortle1/2 site themselves, and it is there prerogative to image with these settings. As I said above, we are catering for a whole group, not a single member who wants to use the pier in search of a Holy Grail object.

It's hardly fair for a single member of a €1300 per year syndicate to expect all their way on a system that has other members to take into consideration. Other members want and needs must always be factored in, and this leads to more generic settings to suit everyone. Standardization keeps the costs and manpower down, which leads to lower pricing for you, the user.

So it's about balance. Roboscopes has to balance the needs of the group and also have to cover its costs and on the rare occasion make a profit :)

Camera

We spent 6 months getting used to the Kepler and it's foibles, it can be set up three ways, 2 of which don't work properly in our opinion and one that does, we went with the one that does, and it makes the most of the sensor's capabilities and innate properties. We know this camera well and don't need to be told how to run it when very few people have ever actually used one. It has about as much in common to a Sony sensor as I have to Brad Pitt :)

Tools

Manuel is writing an exposure calculator base on the response of the Kepler camera plus a filter weighting system, whilst It's not live yet and maybe a little while before it goes live, the current members of Pier-8 have a guide supplied by myself on how to get the best out of this telescope/camera combination
There are lots of new job input features and other features currently being built and implemented Ray that perhaps you have not used or are aware of but they are all designed to make data capture easier and productive, with better automated comms from us and almost instant data sharing to your Google Drive the following morning.

In essence Ray, not every feature will please everyone and some that please others may not make you happy and vice versa but we had to make a judgement call on the best way to do this and keep everyone happy whilst giving a deliverable service that gave our customers some joint as well as personal datasets from a pier and maintaining productivity to the maximum.

HTH

Steve

Steve, 

Apologies for taking so much of your time up giving a very detailed reply and explanation, and also for my mistake not putting this on the correct thread. I ought to have at least mentioned that this applied across the board and not just pier 8.

It remains to be seen whether or not immediately downloading data from the night before ends up in an administrative nightmare, which was my main concern. It is possibly preferable to download straight away rather than what is done now, but, once a week I believe would be a better option. 

The other point about the calculator I mentioned still stands. If you are unsure as new users in particular will probably be and for most jobs, then absolutely use the calculator. In situations where a particular object requires a long integration time as established by reference to Astrobin for example, then there ought not to be any reason why exposure counts and times cannot be input by a member. I should clarify this by adding that this would most likely be for a dim narrowband target.

I'm fully aware of all that has been going on with regards to discovering new nebulae, but that's unlikely to be the case here given we're talking about more imaging hours required for just one filter than we're allowed.

That I think is the point you are missing. If someone wants to use all or a large part of their allowance of imaging time to obtain an outstanding result for posting in Astrobin for example, then that should be allowed. The member will suffer the loss of their time, however, everyone else gains by having access to it as well. :) Why would you consider that a problem. 

The ratio of exposures between narrowband filters is something that can have a profound effect on the resulting image. You've often been critical of the amount of integration time requested with the Ha filter compared with the other 2, I wouldn't disagree. The difficult part is establishing the o3 and s2 integration times and whether or not both of those are needed. In some situations there are better ways to go about this. Look at what others have done on Astrobin, or, from personal experience after imaging it yourself, are a couple of suggestions. I'd also refer you to Gary Imm's compendium. Again, this ought to be allowed to override the calculator, which to me is a major issue. The inappropriate use of time on 'easy' is addressed by the imposition of the number of hours allotted per member.

Apologies for labouring that point, but you appear to be missing it. 

Does any of this make more sense? 

In summary :

1) Only download weekly if any data has been captured. 

2) If a member of the Syndicate is within their allotted time, then allow an override. Perhaps a note to this effect to accompany the submission. 

Ray 

Disclaimer : I am not a member of Astrobin and will certainly not benefit financially from anyone joining it as a result of my many plugs. 

I am not missing a thing Ray, I am just intentionally not stating what all the new features are because it's somewhat fluid as we are building the new job portal system and the specs are changing all the time, plus I don't want to spoil the surprise for everyone!

I need to keep some mystery about what's happening behind the scenes...

Steve

Hi Steve, 

I love good surprises. I trust that all will be revealed very soon and around the same time as the joining page becomes available. No need to reply, so try and enjoy the rest of your weekend. 

Cheers, 

Ray