Long-form reading from the darkroom. Six notes on the operations that turn raw archival data into a photograph you can publish — and the rules we keep ourselves to so the picture stays honest.
Two formats walk into a frame. One was designed by photographers. One was designed by astronomers. The difference is what they think you're allowed to throw away.
Stacking six hundred frames is not the same thing as a longer one. It is a different operation against a different kind of noise.
X-rays are invisible. Every published Chandra image is a choice. Here is how the choice gets made, and where the limits are.
A photograph of a galaxy has two spatial dimensions. The galaxy itself has three. 1snob AstroRoom builds the missing one out of what the data actually knows.
Sgr A* does not make a sound. There is no medium between us. The sonification is a translation, with rules. The rules are the point.
Every picture 1snob AstroRoom outputs comes with a chain of hashes. The chain says yes, this is the picture I made, and yes, this is exactly how I made it.