et me begin by saying what an honor it is to author a column in Astronomy on image processing. I have been reading this magazine my entire life, and to be part of the burgeoning community of digital astrophotographers through it is incredible. I also bow to my predecessor, Tony Hallas, for blazing a trail and writing a concise column on the subject, which will serve as a template for my future articles.
Image processing is a mix of both science and art. The science comes from the fact that each picture we take is a measurement. Handling the values we obtain in a rigorous way through standard processing steps enables us to get the most from our data. The art comes from the choices we make about which attributes of the data we want to highlight.
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