80 replies to this topic

[WarmWeatherGuy]

Astronomy Picture of the Day has this picture of the International Space Station whizzing past Saturn. This should give you an idea of how large and bright the ISS is. It is basically as large and bright as Saturn. Here is the APOD link:

http://apod.nasa.gov...d/ap160122.html

 

[HxPI]

Oh wow that is an epically cool composition!! Too bad it seems this was presented under false pretenses!! If it's true, I would suggest anyone who "liked" this on social media and feel betrayed by the false pretense should immediately revoke their like status. I wonder how many likes would remain.....

 

I still like the composition and it stirs the imagination. However the debate about APOD and integrity is a necessary one to have also. Thanks for sharing.

 

Ciao,

Mel

Edited by HxPI, 24 January 2016 - 01:56 AM.

[Space Cowboy]

Way brighter than Saturn :-)

[xb39]

And here is the corresponding thread in the german forum: http://forum.astrono...it)#Post1199922

[MvZ]

A lot of processing is required to get something like this.

 

Each ISS in this image is exactly the same as the next one, they are simply copies of each other (even with perfect seeing they would never be the same, and at 17 degrees altitude, there is not even close to perfect seeing - you can get decent seeing though). The repeated image of ISS is processed - probably stacked say 10 frames, but would be nice to know how and how many exactly?-  and then put back together in this montage image. 

 

Saturn itself is obviously also not a raw image, you can even see some sharpening artifacts in the rings. That is likely in the order of 1 minute of stacked data. This was taken at 17 degrees altitude, and in the early morning when the sun was already up.

 

I'm really curious what the raw data looked like. He mentioned a shutter speed of 42 FPS*, but at 42 FPS you would not of course freeze ISS, as then you would only see one streak of light instead of these individual ISS images. To not have any motion blurring - and guessing from these images there is not much more than 2 pixels of motion blurring, and considering the ISS images are roughly 100 pixels apart, you would have to be imaging at least 100/2 = 50 times as fast as 42 fps.. so about 1/2000s.

 

1/2000s would make Saturn pretty much dark, even with very high gain. You perhaps wouldn't even know if ISS went over Saturn.

 

Until I see some strong evidence that this is in fact 'real' (whatever that may be, I don't care if it is a montage, but now I'm even doubtful he actually captured ISS in front of Saturn at all...), I'm very skeptic. Raw footage and a clear description of how this montage was made is not a lot to ask, especially considering it is much easier to show raw footage - even just one frame - than it is to show the final product. 

 

*One of the few things that I don't find "fishy" about this is the 42 FPS. That number makes perfect sense to me. The answer to life the universe and everything. 

Edited by MvZ, 22 January 2016 - 05:01 PM.

[Sunspot]

A lot of processing is required to get something like this.

 

Each ISS in this image is exactly the same as the next one, they are simply copies of each other (even with perfect seeing they would never be the same, and at 17 degrees altitude, there is not even close to perfect seeing - you can get decent seeing though). The repeated image of ISS is processed - probably stacked say 10 frames, but would be nice to know how and how many exactly?-  and then put back together in this montage image. 

 

Saturn itself is obviously also not a raw image, you can even see some sharpening artifacts in the rings. That is likely in the order of 1 minute of stacked data. This was taken at 17 degrees altitude, and in the early morning when the sun was already up.

 

I'm really curious what the raw data looked like. He mentioned a shutter speed of 42 FPS*, but at 42 FPS you would not of course freeze ISS, as then you would only see one streak of light instead of these individual ISS images. To not have any motion blurring - and guessing from these images there is not much more than 2 pixels of motion blurring, and considering the ISS images are roughly 100 pixels apart, you would have to be imaging at least 100/2 = 50 times as fast as 42 fps.. so about 1/2000s.

 

1/2000s would make Saturn pretty much dark, even with very high gain. You perhaps wouldn't even know if ISS went over Saturn.

 

Until I see some strong evidence that this is in fact 'real' (whatever that may be, I don't care if it is a montage, but now I'm even doubtful he actually captured ISS in front of Saturn at all...), I'm very skeptic. Raw footage and a clear description of how this montage was made is not a lot to ask, especially considering it is much easier to show raw footage - even just one frame - than it is to show the final product. 

 

*One of the few things that I don't find "fishy" about this is the 42 FPS. That number makes perfect sense to me. The answer to life the universe and everything. 

Definitely this looks extremely fishy. I was reading a critique of this on FB. The evidence is very compelling that it is not real. For one thing, according to the discussion, it occurred at 8:33am local time, well after sunrise. Also, I cropped a couple of the ISS images, blew them up 10x, strongly enhanced the contrast and sharpness and then superimposed them on top of each other. Not the slightest evidence of variation, even when blown 10x. Also, the ISS is much brighter than Saturn, reaching as bright as -4.8 magnitude. Saturn is about .5 magnitude currently. I'm not drawing conclusions, but I am not convinced it is real, I would need much better evidence.

 

The evidence mounts, but like Paul says, I would like to see what an expert like Alessandro Bianconi has to say.

Edited by Sunspot, 22 January 2016 - 06:34 PM.

[ToxMan]

Steve, Emil,

 

I'm curious to hear what Alessandro Bianconi has to say. He is quite experienced with capturing the ISS. Maybe he will see this post.

 

Paul

[Alan French]

 

A lot of processing is required to get something like this.

 

Each ISS in this image is exactly the same as the next one, they are simply copies of each other (even with perfect seeing they would never be the same, and at 17 degrees altitude, there is not even close to perfect seeing - you can get decent seeing though). The repeated image of ISS is processed - probably stacked say 10 frames, but would be nice to know how and how many exactly?-  and then put back together in this montage image. 

 

Saturn itself is obviously also not a raw image, you can even see some sharpening artifacts in the rings. That is likely in the order of 1 minute of stacked data. This was taken at 17 degrees altitude, and in the early morning when the sun was already up.

 

I'm really curious what the raw data looked like. He mentioned a shutter speed of 42 FPS*, but at 42 FPS you would not of course freeze ISS, as then you would only see one streak of light instead of these individual ISS images. To not have any motion blurring - and guessing from these images there is not much more than 2 pixels of motion blurring, and considering the ISS images are roughly 100 pixels apart, you would have to be imaging at least 100/2 = 50 times as fast as 42 fps.. so about 1/2000s.

 

1/2000s would make Saturn pretty much dark, even with very high gain. You perhaps wouldn't even know if ISS went over Saturn.

 

Until I see some strong evidence that this is in fact 'real' (whatever that may be, I don't care if it is a montage, but now I'm even doubtful he actually captured ISS in front of Saturn at all...), I'm very skeptic. Raw footage and a clear description of how this montage was made is not a lot to ask, especially considering it is much easier to show raw footage - even just one frame - than it is to show the final product. 

 

*One of the few things that I don't find "fishy" about this is the 42 FPS. That number makes perfect sense to me. The answer to life the universe and everything. 

Definitely this looks extremely fishy. I was reading a critique of this on FB. The evidence is very compelling that it is not real. For one thing, according to the discussion, it occurred at 8:33am local time, well after sunrise. Also, I cropped a couple of the ISS images, blew them up 10x, strongly enhanced the contrast and sharpness and then superimposed them on top of each other. Not the slightest evidence of variation, even when blown 10x. Also, the ISS is much brighter than Saturn, reaching as bright as -4.8 magnitude. Saturn is about .5 magnitude currently. I'm not drawing conclusions, but I am not convinced it is real, I would need much better evidence.

 

The evidence mounts, but like Paul says, I would like to see what an expert like Alessandro Bianconi has to say.

 

 

There may be issues with this, but you're wrong about "well after sunrise." At the time of the transit, the top of the Sun was just barely poking about the horizon. (Checked in Sky Safari Pro set to his location on that date and time.)

 

Clear skies, Alan

[Ethan Chappel]

Here is his video of the event:

 

https://www.youtube....h?v=OV7iGt0AH_U

 

EDIT: I went ahead and watched the video after posting, and the turbulence on Saturn looks fabricated to me. The image looks sharpened, then turbulence was added back in with software.

 

Also, he did a similar thing on Jupiter back in June, but this one looks more convincing to me:

 

http://jwastronomy.c...ront-of-Jupiter

 

It's interesting to note that the title of the Jupiter post suggests that this is the first time something like this has been captured on video (EDIT: The end of the article confirms that), but I'm fairly certain that something like this got an APOD two years ago (EDIT: The APOD I had in mind was a near miss, but I found this from 2004: http://www.threehill...o2_image_67.htm)

Edited by AstroEthan, 23 January 2016 - 11:15 AM.

[Tom Polakis]

It's unfortunate that something that is so obviously fabricated is getting any positive attention, much less a coveted APOD publication.  For those who chase ISS transits, it's laughable on many levels, and only made more so by the silly video.

 

Tom

[Alan French]

APOD has added "composite" to the description, which seems inadequate.

 

Clear skies, Alan

[Ethan Chappel]

This person's image of the conjunction between Saturn and Venus looks suspicious as well. If he's faked this image then he could have easily faked the transit image as well. Here's the post of that image for reference: http://jwastronomy.c...lanetary-Images

 

To my eyes, something looks off about Saturn. I've never seen it's rings so dark, but it looked familiar to me. I ended up looking at several simulations to see if I could find anything with dark rings and I've concluded that the Saturn you see in this conjunction image is actually a simulation from CalSky. You can see their simulation of Saturn on their planets page: http://www.calsky.co...=35527298793113

 

Here's his rendition of Saturn compared to CalSky's simulation of Saturn:

 

 

Something less obvious I noticed is that his conjunction image of Saturn has a dark and defined belt just above the equator, but the most recent color image I can find (below) has a lighter and more tenuous northern belt, blending in with higher latitudes. I have doubts that this belt could have been picked up at the resolution he was shooting at.

 

 

Curiously enough, all of the other images I saw on this website seem legitimate, but the images of the ISS transit and the conjunction seem very much faked to me.

[Space Cowboy]

Makes a complete mockery of astro imaging.

[ToxMan]

I'm dismayed, because I like the image.

 

What is not acceptable is using data from other sources, and passing it off as one's own work. Stuart is right. It would be a mockery of our endeavors. I hope this composite was the author's own work.

 

Does the image of Saturn look like it has enough ring tilt? The Cassini Division should almost be completely visible.

Edited by ToxMan, 23 January 2016 - 03:20 PM.

[MvZ]

Doesn't look like it has enough tilt, when compared to the great image that Trevor Barry has taken 10 hours later:

Attached Thumbnails

• 

Edited by MvZ, 23 January 2016 - 04:14 PM.

[Ethan Chappel]

Emil, this guy has an Instagram account with a picture without the ISS on top. It's already pretty clear on your comparison that the ring tilt is different (probably image from last year if I had to guess), but it might be better to use that version.
 

https://www.instagra...y=j.w.astronomy

[MvZ]

"Had amazing seeing conditions that night." 

I'm sure he meant to say morning instead of night

 

I'll leave it up to others to make more animations, I'm done with this for a while.

[wargrafix]

Its a real shame it looks so fake. I am going to try for the Saturn transit.next Saturday but we'll see. Even at 60fps iss is still a blur

[KiwiRay]

Those comparisons also show no sign of Saturn's shadow on the rings - it appears the Saturn image was captured around opposition last year.  Even my worst Saturn images taken with a 6" SCT show the planet's shadow when it's visible.  (Not that any more evidence was needed that this isn't what it's claimed to be.)

[maadscientist]

Here is the full discussion on Rich Jakiel's Facebook page. It is definitely a manufactured video, I.E. multiple videos and stills, cut and pasted and a final video made. I believe to save face APOD  is now calling it a composite video

 

Here is one Stepen Ramsden did to show how eaqsy it is to do:

https://l.facebook.c...M64&h=RAQEwXYq3

 

Here is my objection:

 

This is a manufactured video:

1) The capture time was 08:33 am. The Sun is up at that point, and there is no way the

background could be black.

2) Speaking of black background, I downloaded the video. There is no noise to the

background, it is completely smooth, indicating some form of cut and paste.

3) Saturn is way too bright for a 42 frames per second capture. I have been doing this for

over 18 years, and there is NO WAY Saturn is that bright at 42 frames per second with a

3.75 micron camera.

4) The ISS is detailed and sharp and in color. I have associates that have captured many

ISS transits, and the station is NEVER resolved to that detail in that short of time.

5) The ISS image over Saturn is structurally different than the other ones....blow it up

and look for yourself.

6) The spacing is wrong for the one over Saturn. The distance from the ISS frames is the

same except for the one over Saturn.

7) Saturn at the capture point is about 16 degrees above the horizon, the image shows

no atmospheric dispersion aberration on Saturn or the ISS.

8) This ISS is significantly brighter than Saturn and would never be just as bright as

depicted in the video.

9) The ISS looks the same in every frame caught. This is impossible due to atmospheric

dispersion and the video capture process.

10) The angular diameter of the ISS was 24.11" during this transit. Saturn's current

angular diameter is 15.6", meaning the ISS is over 1.5 times the size of Saturn. In the

video it is smaller than Saturn, impossible.

 

Here is Stephen Ramsdens written objection:

 

Social Media Attention vs. The Wonder of Science
(the story of the faked APOD)

The world of amateur astronomy is an awesome place where people are generally friendly and helpful. The images produced by today’s amateur equipment far exceed the quality and resolution of professional NASA or Observatory images of the 60s, 70s and 80s. It is absolutely amazing what you can capture using readily available and inexpensive cameras, software and telescopic equipment from your backyard or schoolyard if you devote just a little time to learning the ropes.

Social media has also exploded with fantastic quality images and movies from amateurs all over the world who no longer have to wait for the latest issue of their favorite astronomy magazine to see what everyone else is doing. It’s instantaneous satisfaction in a “Kardashian culture” of consumerism. Along with the readily available exceptional images on social media has come an extreme desire among some of our community to “get noticed” or to have your image published in magazines or on important websites.

APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day) is a NASA ran website featuring the best of the best images from professionals and amateurs alike chosen from thousands of submissions weekly to highlight the absolute wonder and fascination with the heavens. Getting your image featured as an APOD is the “holy grail” for amateur astronomers and really tells everyone in the community that you are “legit” and you have arrived on the scene.

Human nature has, of course, reared it’s ugly head in this hobby like any other and recently an image and video featured as the APOD on Jan 22nd, 2016 has sparked a great deal of controversy among the people who know these things as it seems to be clearly manipulated and faked, or at the very least, processed far beyond what is acceptable in the community as a real image.

The drive and decisions by the author are in question and one has to wonder, have we gotten this self absorbed and forgotten what this hobby is really about so much that we will now simply concoct some fantastic image in order to get more exposure as a featured APOD.? Are the quality controls so lax or has the hobby gotten so refined that even the people over at APOD could be duped by such an obviously “photoshopped” image?

A little background; The International Space Station is an orbiting science platform that makes a complete rotation around the Earth approximately every 90 minutes. It is a large and very picturesque satellite that gives ample opportunity for viewing and imaging from Earthbound telescopes, cameras and eyeballs. The satellite routinely crosses in front of the Sun, Moon, Planets and other celestial objects creating an opportunity to film a beautiful movie showing the ISS and the object in the same image. These events are called “transits” and are predicted with exact accuracy by a fantastically functional website at Calsky.com and in many astronomy software packages like Stellarium, etc.

Anyone on Earth can simply type in their location and get a complete list of every time the ISS, or any other satellite, will cross their field of view or transit an object in their sky.

Catching these “ISS transits” has been a very competitive endeavor, which has addicted many an amateur astronomer. The frustration involved can be overwhelming but the payback from successfully capturing these events is enormous and has created an extreme desire to be the one who gets the best transit image.

I myself gained a lot of popularity and cemented my position as an astronomy lecturer mainly due to the organizer of NEAF at the time, Alan Traino, noticing one of my ISS solar transits on Facebook in 2009. After publishing that image freely on the internet, my popularity increased by 1000% overnight and the next thing I knew, people were requesting me to come to their events to talk about my Solar Astronomy Outreach program -The Charlie Bates Solar Astronomy Project- and actually asking ME to come lecture on solar imaging. The power of capturing the ISS transit is clear in the community.

One of the most popular imagers out there, Thierry LeGault (France) was propelled to astronomy nerd stardom by his (almost) unbelievable DSLR captures of the ISS/Space Shuttle transiting the Sun and Moon. I must admit, I get very excited when Calsky.com tells me that a Solar or Lunar transit is coming up in my area.

Now, back to the story. An image and video submitted to APOD by a young astronomer in Germany recently caught the attention of the social media machine. His post on his own Facebook page had over 150,000 views and shares within a few hours and it was chosen by the APOD team as the Astronomy Picture of the Day for Jan 22nd, 2016 after he submitted it to them for review.

APOD listed in the description “On January 15, the well-timed capture from a site near Dulmen, Germany required telescope… (sic) …with one frame showing the station directly in front of the ringed gas giant.”

Almost immediately, seasoned planetary and ISS imagers in the community started pointing out that there was surely something “not right” with this image. I was attracted to a discussion on Facebook amongst two of the most knowledgeable astronomers in my local community and decided to investigate the image and the stated conditions under which it was taken.

This was indeed not a “well timed capture” but a composite of several different videos at different times manipulated to show a transit at an impossible level of detail.

It didn’t take long for me to notice first off that this video was supposedly taken 2 minutes after sunrise in his community. This sparked my interest as Saturn was on the Eastern side of the sky when this occurred and I knew from years of experience that there is no way any piece of equipment could get such a dark, noiseless background and such vibrant colors and resolution of Saturn in broad daylight. So, I investigated further.

From the authors own information it listed that The ISS was 24.1 arcseconds in apparent size during the transit. He also said that Saturn was 27 arcseconds in diameter at the time. This is, of course, impossible, as Saturn never gets larger than 21.37 arcseconds in apparent diameter. In fact, at the time of this transit, Saturn was just 15.6 arcseconds in size.

So, what does this mean in English? The ISS was in reality almost twice as big in the sky as Saturn at the time of this transit yet the image and video showed it being smaller than Saturn. This was a sure sign of something indeed being “not right” with this APOD. Maybe he mistyped the angular sizes, whatever, this is only one of the several problems with this image stated online by some of the world's best planetary imagers.

The author also stated that he used a 42 frame per second exposure time during a .02 second transit. Anyone who has ever imaged Saturn even in the middle of the night in the darkest of skies knows that there is no way you could possibly capture that amount of color detail in a live view video with a 23 millisecond exposure time. Using this exposure time in a daylight sky would yield nothing but noise and possibly a little bit of the ISS’s grainy silhouette but definitely not a super black background and a perfectly resolved color image of both the ISS and Saturn through a 10 inch Newtonian telescope like the one the author says he used or any other telescope for that matter. It simply isn’t possible.

While researching the event even more, it became apparent from many discrepancies that this image was not a good old fashioned ISS transit capture from a humble astronomer but a cobbled together composite video and image manipulated and created by software to greatly enhance the details and place the ISS artificially right in the middle of Saturn simply to compete for another APOD award. When you go to the author’s website you find that he also sells his prints of astronomical images so the APOD would generate another couple hundred thousand hits and possibly a new batch of sales for his images. Making a buck is not a crime but creating images that aren’t real to make a buck is surely not something that I am in favor of.

Speaking of the author’s website, he is definitely an accomplished imager and the vast majority of the images he has listed for sale and for show on his site are quite beautiful and authentic. It made me wonder what could possibly motivate someone with such talent to artificially create this image….and then I remembered human nature and the quest for fame. This coupled with the desire to make money was surely at the root of this fraud.

This entire episode brings into the limelight the not so productive process by which these APODs are chosen. In order to be considered for placement as an APOD, an imager must send an email to the authors containing the image. This sounds simple enough but when you combine that with the overwhelming desire amongst a fraction of our community to get published or to be instantaneously transformed into a celebrity through astro-imaging, you get the system we have now for APODs.

There are a great deal of astronomers, myself included, who simply are not interested in being featured on these sites or in these magazines. The payback in freely sharing our astronomical images is in the fact that other people enjoy them and it spreads the wonder of science. Our society is sorely in need of inspiration in space exploration and the sciences and the best way to spark that is to simply share these beautiful images freely, without copyright in an attempt to get some young mind interested in space. Or even better, set up your equipment in public places or at schools and let the non-astronomer get exposed to our wonderful hobby through hands on participation. That’s what it is all about for me, your mileage may vary.

Unfortunately, the competitive aspect of our hobby has created a subculture of “get published at any cost” and the APOD submission system feeds right in to this desire. There is a great propensity among the people who have prioritized getting noticed to submit these images through their email procedure thereby flooding the entrants pool to overwhelmingly people who have arguably lost the real importance and meaning of the hobby.

Perhaps if these authors actually searched the internet for their daily image, like we do at solarastronomy.org, instead of relying on the email system to hand it to them, the propensity for people to fake or overly enhance images would be less. I don’t know. I do know that this entire episode has left a black eye on the hobby and highlighted to what extent people will go in order to get attention even when their actual untouched images are beautiful.

Manipulating an image through post processing in order to enhance the existing details is one thing. Constructing an image or video from separate and unrelated videos is something that we, as members of the community, have to put a limit on unless we want to see nothing but fantastical Final Cut Pro files instead of the much more impressive actual beauty of space.

Stephen W. Ramsden
Amateur Astronomer

[maadscientist]

Forgot the link:

 

Here is the full discussion on Rich Jakiel's Facebook page.

 

https://www.facebook...hc_location=ufi

 

Here is a pic I stretched to show cut and paste:

 

[maadscientist]

And John Maclean showing how you can fake one going across Pluto...Look how good a job he did...

 

https://www.facebook...56880174&type=3

 

 

[maadscientist]

This person's image of the conjunction between Saturn and Venus looks suspicious as well. If he's faked this image then he could have easily faked the transit image as well. Here's the post of that image for reference: http://jwastronomy.c...lanetary-Images

 

To my eyes, something looks off about Saturn. I've never seen it's rings so dark, but it looked familiar to me. I ended up looking at several simulations to see if I could find anything with dark rings and I've concluded that the Saturn you see in this conjunction image is actually a simulation from CalSky. You can see their simulation of Saturn on their planets page: http://www.calsky.co...=35527298793113

 

Here's his rendition of Saturn compared to CalSky's simulation of Saturn:

 

JW-CS.png

 

Something less obvious I noticed is that his conjunction image of Saturn has a dark and defined belt just above the equator, but the most recent color image I can find (below) has a lighter and more tenuous northern belt, blending in with higher latitudes. I have doubts that this belt could have been picked up at the resolution he was shooting at.

 

 

Curiously enough, all of the other images I saw on this website seem legitimate, but the images of the ISS transit and the conjunction seem very much faked to me.

Saturn would be significantly dimmer. Here is one from Colin Legg

 

 

As to his motives, probably money, or glory....He got away with the same fraud a year ago with Jupiter that actually got published in an Astro magazine....Apparently he thought he had been vetted by professionals, so he took it to another level assuming no one was watching or he already got the hall pass.....NOT.....

[maadscientist]

APOD has added "composite" to the description, which seems inadequate.

 

Clear skies, Alan

I emailed those APOD guys early and said it was not a live capture, and they better change it or lose a lot of credibility. Stephen Ramsden followed uop as well. Both of us are retired and beholden to NO ONE, so we can speak the truth without threat of being fired or snubbed in the professional community. He actually got a response from them, blowing him off, but glad to see they have at least made some later attempt at correction. I have bandied about the term composite, maybe I shouldn't have, as I have been one voracious critic of letting this one through, but more importantly, not correcting it and admitting their mistake. Hey, everyone gets fooled, it's human and if they had admitted as such it would be OK. However, as usual, they are taking the way out which saves their face, using the word composite without explaining what the fuss is about. A great learning opportunity WASTED. I am let down a bunch, because it is a slap in the face to all imagers who spend long nights away from their families imaging, staying out tin the freezing cold all night, setting up and taking down, learning and processing....in any astro Imaging you PAY YOUR DUES THROUGH SWEAT AND TOIL.....it absolutely scalds me to death to see some fraudster jump the line and get rewarded for it.

 

Now on top of that, I am not even sure he took the Saturn on the same night, which is really insulting......

 

One person asked on another thread if it was really a fraud, and this is how I replied:

 

It's a composite of a few videos, the stills of the ISS are sharpened and pasted one at a time. Saturn is processed separately, then has an an ISS pasted on it. The final video, is a video of the videos/stills. Now this is a very nice SIMULATION of the ISS transit over Saturn (not a live actual capture). Hey it looks nice, BUT he should have labelled it that way, saying I made a composite video to show for the general public. That would have been an accepted way to do it. But as usual, GLORY gets in the way. He also sells stuff on his site, so GREED could always be a factor. I tell my kids the only thing you have when you die is YOUR INTEGRITY...trading that for some coins or applause is a very poor trade indeed...

 

Dan Llewellyn

[Ethan Chappel]

Since we're throwing in examples, I'll throw my one attempt into the ring. This is what I assume is now called a "honest composite", where separately processed areas of the image come from the same raw data and without significant manipulation. For this one, Saturn was stacked, sharpened, and brightened like usual and the ISS was brought in directly from the raw data.

 

 

Here's a raw frame for reference:

 

 

Also, some breaking news! Any of my Jupiter images with moons since March 2015 are "honest composites"! How else can I have moons that aren't streaks of colors?

Edited by AstroEthan, 24 January 2016 - 12:44 AM.