Standard competition rules

Skill-based competition

AstroLeague competitions are judged on skill through published criteria. They do not involve wagers, purchased votes, or random drawings, and payment never improves eligibility or scoring.

Frozen event rules

Before an event is scheduled, it publishes its acquisition window, target restrictions, processing and collaboration rules, permitted data sources, award eligibility, evidence requirements, judging dates, results date, and factual-review deadline. Those rules and dates are then frozen.

Scoring

Juried results use the published 100-point rubric. Equipment, experience, Bortle estimate, weather opportunity, and integration time determine category eligibility only and never multiply rubric scores.

Read the complete public rubric and score anchors

Blind review

Judges may not seek entrant identities, discuss active assignments, or score entries with personal, financial, club, brand, client, or close professional conflicts. Entry evidence stays locked until a judge declares no conflict.

Verification

Finalists may be required to provide representative originals, headers, acquisition logs, equipment declarations, and processing disclosures privately. Failure to verify can disqualify an entry before finalization.

Manipulation

Synthetic replacement, generative additions, purchased votes, duplicate accounts, falsified metadata, and undisclosed third-party data are prohibited unless a competition explicitly creates and describes a category allowing them.

Finalization and factual review

Completed panel scores are aggregated deterministically using the tie-break order published with the competition. Finalized placement and score snapshots are immutable. Factual review addresses eligibility, conflicts, arithmetic, or rule application—not ordinary disagreement with artistic judgment—and follows the event-specific deadline.