Our Crediting Policy Is Changing
This post is very important, so I hope you will forgive me if I will sound to you a bit different from my usual communications and I will go straight to the point.
Up until now, we haven't required any user to credit Telescope Live when they published their astrophotography pictures obtained with data taken from our telescopes.
I know that the majority of you already cite the source of the data when publishing your pictures.
But, long story short, we have decided to formally change our crediting policy and make crediting compulsory.
The reason why is that we believe it is important and fair to the wider astrophotography community that astrophotography pictures created with pristine data from professional facilities (such as those of Telescope Live) clearly specify the source of the data.
If you don't do so, people who look at or judge your image will likely assume that you took the images yourself, with your own gear.
That’s why we are changing our crediting policy. Here below is how it will work.
Starting from today, when you publish astrophotography pictures created using data from Telescope Live (either from One-Click Observations, Bundles or Advanced Requests) you must credit Telescope Live as the data source.
The preferred and recommended crediting line is:
- Credits: <Your Name> / Telescope Live; or
- Image processed by <Your Name>, original data from Telescope Live
This should be clearly written in the picture's caption.
Alternative crediting, which in essence respects the above principles, is also accepted.
If you post your images on Astrobin, the way in which you can credit the source of the data is embedded into the submission process. You can follow this help page to see how you can do it.
Note that you don't have to change crediting of images you have already posted. This policy is only enforceable for pictures posted after 11 March 2022.
Note we will constantly monitor the enforcement of this policy, especially when astrophotography pictures created with data from Telescope Live are submitted to magazines, websites, competitions or for the Astronomy Picture of The Day (APOD).
It will be your responsibility to ensure that wherever your image is displayed that our crediting policy is adhered to. If you fail to do so, you will be in violation of our Terms & Conditions, and we might suspend your account.
We ask you to do your best to comply with this rule and help us make the wider astrophotography community a fairer environment, where the source of the data is always transparently shown.
