Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2009 competition winners

[Mike]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/picture-galleries/6169034/Astronomy-Photographer-of-the-Year-2009-competition-winners.html

[Carole]

Did any of our members apply, I think some of the images on our gallery well match up to some fo the winners?

Fancy spending 19 hours imaging the horsehead!!!!!!

Carole

[Daniel]

That Horsehead is incredible, I didn't enter the competition (think I've got a long way to go yet) but I did submit some of my images into the flickr pool for the competition and got an email from greenwich observatory asking if they can show some of my images in the exhibition there showing up there at the moment, had to send them hi res images, a little blurb about myself and a picture of me "in action" Might go down there tommorrow to see if the stuffs showing yet.

Daniel
:O)

[MarkS]

My mum and dad saw the exhibition of photos today (at the observatory) and said it's well worth going.

Mark

[MarkS]

I went to see them today - the display consists of illuminated panels showing all the images in the Telegraph article.  Plus, at the end, there's an extra interactive display where you can select and view many other entries from around the world.

Daniel, I didn't come across any of yours but I looked at only a small proportion of them.

In the "Deep Space" category the runners-up all had total exposure times ranging from 13.5-40 hours!

Martin Pugh's Horsehead was a worthy winner - incredible detail.  But look at the equipment he was using and under Australian skies too:
http://www.martinpughastrophotography.id.au/Equip&Obs/Equip&Obs_Index_AUS.htm
"SBIG STL11000 CCD camera guided with adaptive optics; 12.5-inch RC Optical Systems Ritchey-Chrétien telescope; Software Bisque Paramount ME mount; 19 hours of exposures" - it was imaged over 14 nights.

I've found the full-size image here:
http://www.martinpughastrophotography.id.au/images/IC434LRGBV3.jpg

The competition runs again next year so I need to plan an object I can image for about 25 hours or so by next year.  Probably impossible given the UK's weather!  It was notable that no UK astrophotographer was a Deep Sky runner up.

Mark

[Daniel]

Wow, that image is smooooth!

I went down there today myself, at first i thought they hadn't included any of my images until I looked at the astrophotographer profiles section, and I was in there, a few of my images, my "in action" picture and the paragraphs I'd written, I was well chuffed!

I'd like to work on an object myself for next year myself, although like you said, it'll be hard getting any good data in the uk, especially with us so close to the city!

Daniel
:O)

[mickw]

Stunning images   
Perhaps they should be having a category of "Kit less than £10000"

[Carole]

And a category for polluted and cloudy skies.

Carole

[The Thing]

Maybe Mark, Daniel etc. should collaborate and pool data for a single object, one doing h-alpha and another OIII etc. That way you could up the hours of exposure even with only a few clear nights. Others do it.

[MarkS]

Perhaps they should be having a category of "Kit less than £10000"

To quote one of the judges:
"Thirty years ago it would have taken hours of effort on a large professional telescope to make an image like this"

[Whitters]

14 clear nights, wow! can you imagine spending 7 years imaging the same object

I remember when we used to get clear skies, where has all this cloud come from this summer?

[MarkS]

Adaptive Optics - wow!

Explained here: http://www.sbig.com/sbwhtmls/ao8.htm

Mark