I occasionally purchase data from this site, and until the recent changes, I have found it to be a decent source of image data. The previous version of the website (before earlier this month) was admittedly pretty basic, but it provided, at least to me, a quick way of assessing their inventory and seeing what others were doing with the data. My only complaint was the overabundance of narrowband data relative to LRGB, which I prefer. But that being said, it worked for me.
The website's new design makes it difficult to determine what is new in their inventory. Instead, I get the following, none of which meet my needs. Just show me what is new!
"A hand‑curated carousel of standout datasets—new releases, rare targets, and limited‑time discounts. It refreshes every 24 hours, so grab anything that catches your eye before it’s replaced." Please, I don't want any "hand curating!"
or
"Ranked by recent community activity – explore the datasets fellow astrophotographers are enjoying right now. " I don't care what others are looking at. Sometimes the best image is one that no one has worked on.
or
"Limited‑time deals: seven datasets are on sale at any moment, with one offer rotating out and a new one added each day. Check back daily to catch fresh bargains before they disappear." This is fine. Who doesn't want a bargain?
So, what do others think about these changes?
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It sounds like a lot of marketing BS to appeal more to the casual buyer, not hardcore astrophotographers.
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Yeah, they had a good thing going: you could choose what you wanted, the number of observations you wanted, and how much you wanted to spend.
Now you're stuck with either a sample, which has just a little bit of data for one credit, or the entire dataset, which might cost 20 or more credits. The wallpapers also cost one credit now.
The site's navigation isn't all that great, but it's reflective of other websites' approaches, so it's not a surprise.
It's unfortunate they went this way. Their user base will determine the long-term impact of the changes on Telescope Live's relevance in the astrophotography community.
It's a common challenge for platforms to balance profitability with user experience, and these updates seem to reflect a new direction for Telescope Live.
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I seem to remember using them when it was just a remote telescope site where you could book time on the scope of your choice and run the session yourself.
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There are a lot of new people coming into this hobby and TL4 looks like an approach to address that market. As someone new to this hobby myself and new to Telescope Live (two weeks) ; I barely got used to TL3 and TL4 came out. My experience on TL3 with One Click Observations was; which one or ones to choose? Should I get a bundle but is that more data than I need?. People experienced in this hobby would not have these concerns. Instead, TL4 says the sample represents the best hour of the observation, which takes away the concerns for someone new and less knowledgeable of which one to choose. The results from the samples I've purchased under TL4 seem good to me but that is based on my skill level so far, which is limited. It seems they've made it a lot more attractive for those new to the hobby while making it more expensive for those who know what they are doing.
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George Hatfield:
I occasionally purchase data from this site, and until the recent changes, I have found it to be a decent source of image data. The previous version of the website (before earlier this month) was admittedly pretty basic, but it provided, at least to me, a quick way of assessing their inventory and seeing what others were doing with the data. My only complaint was the overabundance of narrowband data relative to LRGB, which I prefer. But that being said, it worked for me.
The website's new design makes it difficult to determine what is new in their inventory. Instead, I get the following, none of which meet my needs. Just show me what is new!
"A hand‑curated carousel of standout datasets—new releases, rare targets, and limited‑time discounts. It refreshes every 24 hours, so grab anything that catches your eye before it’s replaced." Please, I don't want any "hand curating!"
or
"Ranked by recent community activity – explore the datasets fellow astrophotographers are enjoying right now. " I don't care what others are looking at. Sometimes the best image is one that no one has worked on.
or
"Limited‑time deals: seven datasets are on sale at any moment, with one offer rotating out and a new one added each day. Check back daily to catch fresh bargains before they disappear." This is fine. Who doesn't want a bargain?
So, what do others think about these changes? Telescope.live operates on a model where they want to sell every single subframe they take, no matter the quality of said images. They will use any means necessary to do so. They used to have an upvote process of imaging suggestions that would immediately ask you to pay for it to happen, rather than it being some social system of determination of the likelihood of sales happening. They operate on the McDonalds business model, of value menus, and other matters that do not show confidence in the data they are selling. I can understand the reasoning here though, since the price per hour people are willing to pay for data at -- knowing it is very high quality -- sit right in the $2-$2.50/hour range, which is crazy considering most of the systems taking the data cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. We put sales and deals on data, which are more to give back to the community. We sell a lot of data at regular prices, and most of our customers that pay full price for our data do so frequently because we have the quality they demand. So here -- you get what you pay for would be my take.
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I have been a low-level subscriber of TL for more than a year. I found it useful to supplement some of the material I took in my backyard. At its best, the CH1 scope gave much better image quality than my 12" in my backyard. However, the number of useful frames for each DSO was a bit of a lottery as little QC was applied. The SNR was also surprisingly low for a large telescope on a dark site, and I suspect many frames was taken in moonlight. The way that the "packages" were sold made it impossible to QC first.
As I understand it, the new TL4 site is supposed to have better QC applied to the data. While it is now even more difficult to determine the conditions that the data were taken in - including when the data were taken - I welcome the addition of a "wallpaper" image derived from the dataset. This now gives some idea of the Quality of the data-set on offer.
I probably won't be staying with TL, but I get why they have changed. As others have said, they are about maximizing what they can sell at a low price point. For me, that lowers the barrier to entry, which is a good thing. Via the watermark images, there appears to be greater transparency regarding the quality, which is an even better thing. When the QC has been tightened or not, time will tell. But overall, I do think there is a place for TL and I wish them well with the refresh.
Brian
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I used them in the past and the reason I quit was the terrible user experience. First of all, unfortunately, that was one of the slowest websites I have ever visited. Also hard to navigate through the database. Keyword search had issues, I knew the dataset there was but the search result wasn't yielding that, had to go through 20 pages in very slow mode. Sad to hear it got even worse for others, because I believe these platforms offer many people a chance to start astrophotography.
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Dark Matters Astrophotography:
people are willing to pay for data at -- knowing it is very high quality -- sit right in the $2-$2.50/hour range The only way they can make that work is to sell that $2-$2.5/hr data to 20-30 different users. I'd pass out if I computed what my images cost! Single user, super expensive scope, maybe 12 images/year during a good year is more like $200-$250/hr (depending on how you amortize the cost)...but at least the hourly cost goes down a bit every year. I'll be dead in 20 years but at least by then, my cost might be down to $3-$5/hr! :-p John
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John Hayes:
Dark Matters Astrophotography:
people are willing to pay for data at -- knowing it is very high quality -- sit right in the $2-$2.50/hour range
The only way they can make that work is to sell that $2-$2.5/hr data to 20-30 different users. I'd pass out if I computed what my images cost! Single user, super expensive scope, maybe 12 images/year during a good year is more like $200-$250/hr (depending on how you amortize the cost)...but at least the hourly cost goes down a bit every year. I'll be dead in 20 years but at least by then, my cost might be down to $3-$5/hr! :-p
John That data sells to thousands of users. We sell data from the scope you sold me, at those rates, and it has not only paid itself off already, but is in the green by almost the same amount. What Dark Matters does, is sell the absolute best data the sky allows, for the same price you can buy junk data for. Our customers know this, and buy from us because they get a steak cooked by a chef at the price they can get a hamburger from McDonalds for. We also do about 60/70 full completed image projects per year with your scope. That is just one scope of many. Our automation is second to none, one part of which we are offering for free to the community.  |
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I would like to say that I find the TL data quality quite good overall. Especially given the price. It may not be perfect 100% of the time, but for me, that is not a problem. There have been star shape problems in the past, and some frames are unusable for one reason or another, but I have rarely asked for a refund. And when I have, the refund was forthcoming without argument. With BlurXterminator and NoiseXterminator, plus the other tools of PI and PS there is not much that can't be overcome.
Also, the price is right, at least for me. All I want from TL is a quick way of assessing their inventory and being able to pick and choose what data set to buy. That no longer seems possible, and I will probably leave. But I will miss the previous version of Telescope.live… what was it? TL3?
George Hatfield
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Dark Matters Astrophotography:
John Hayes:
Dark Matters Astrophotography:
people are willing to pay for data at -- knowing it is very high quality -- sit right in the $2-$2.50/hour range
The only way they can make that work is to sell that $2-$2.5/hr data to 20-30 different users. I'd pass out if I computed what my images cost! Single user, super expensive scope, maybe 12 images/year during a good year is more like $200-$250/hr (depending on how you amortize the cost)...but at least the hourly cost goes down a bit every year. I'll be dead in 20 years but at least by then, my cost might be down to $3-$5/hr! :-p
John
That data sells to thousands of users. We sell data from the scope you sold me, at those rates, and it has not only paid itself off already, but is in the green by almost the same amount.
What Dark Matters does, is sell the absolute best data the sky allows, for the same price you can buy junk data for. Our customers know this, and buy from us because they get a steak cooked by a chef at the price they can get a hamburger from McDonalds for.
We also do about 60/70 full completed image projects per year with your scope. That is just one scope of many. Our automation is second to none, one part of which we are offering for free to the community. Thanks for the update Bill! I’m delighted to hear that it has worked out so well. It certainly sounds like it worked out much better than leaving those funds in the stock market! Of course you’ve also done a great job of optimizing the use of the equipment and putting together a “real” business. Very well done! - John
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John Hayes:
Dark Matters Astrophotography:
John Hayes:
Dark Matters Astrophotography:
people are willing to pay for data at -- knowing it is very high quality -- sit right in the $2-$2.50/hour range
The only way they can make that work is to sell that $2-$2.5/hr data to 20-30 different users. I'd pass out if I computed what my images cost! Single user, super expensive scope, maybe 12 images/year during a good year is more like $200-$250/hr (depending on how you amortize the cost)...but at least the hourly cost goes down a bit every year. I'll be dead in 20 years but at least by then, my cost might be down to $3-$5/hr! :-p
John
That data sells to thousands of users. We sell data from the scope you sold me, at those rates, and it has not only paid itself off already, but is in the green by almost the same amount.
What Dark Matters does, is sell the absolute best data the sky allows, for the same price you can buy junk data for. Our customers know this, and buy from us because they get a steak cooked by a chef at the price they can get a hamburger from McDonalds for.
We also do about 60/70 full completed image projects per year with your scope. That is just one scope of many. Our automation is second to none, one part of which we are offering for free to the community.
Thanks for the update Bill! I’m delighted to hear that it has worked out so well. It certainly sounds like it worked out much better than leaving those funds in the stock market! Of course you’ve also done a great job of optimizing the use of the equipment and putting together a “real” business. Very well done!
- John Thanks John! Prior to this I did use TL and the data quality wasn’t up to my own personal standards. That is part of the reason why I decided to build Dark Matters. While prices can be what they are the data quality shouldn’t suffer as a result. We don't just sell data though, we are a dealer for Optec, MoonLite, Moravian, FLI, Chroma, etc.
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yeah not happy that the advanced scheduling in TL is gone. for all the hype over the last 2 years about TL4 i am kind of left asking "what took so long just to do this?".
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