On 8/9/22 20:16, RichA wrote:
> I've seen some amazing planetary images, shots from 10-20 inch scopes that vastly eclipse what professional observatories did years ago. What I don't quite get though are the highly overprocessed images. The images are manipulated to the point of clear emergence of artifacts. Surface of Jupiter's clouds looks more like the curdled milk of the inner Orion nebula at high power. What I'm wondering is if the processors can see this and do the realize it isn't detail on the planet?
>

The solution is simple: view only those images from the known planetary
imagers. There have been well established certain names over the last
two or three decades. These individuals have produced great images
consistently without artifacts. A prominent name coming to mind is
Damien Peach, but there are others as well. Individuals impressing me
from a decade or two back were Eric Ng and Chris Go. Ed Grafton,
although he used traditional CCD camera, also produced low artifact
images. There were some in Australia as well. Of all these, if I were
to take a guess, I'd say that Peach was probably still active because he
seemed to spare no expense with his scopes and travel necessary in order
to obtain the excellent images he shared with the world.

Where I more seriously question image authenticity is in DSOs. After
Hubble, I began seeing supposed amateurs producing resolution
approaching Hubble's in their astrophotos. I remember seeing images of
M57, for example, that had sharpness that shouldn't have been, at least
in my mind and all after Hubble. On the other hand, perhaps it was the
effect of Ha filters. Those seem to produce sharp results and I suppose
if combined with RGB properly could give greater resolution. I will at
least consider that possibility.