AbsolutelyN

But its not just about pure technical image perfection based on traditional astrophotography (which I love and practice). It's a blend of astronomy, science and creative thinking. The audience they want to inspire is the public, not just astrophotographers. They need a range of traditional, contemporary and creative images - even controversial images. I really get the point of a creative category, I'm surprised they have not done that already. That still doesn't prevent or delegitimize it from it winning though if it was in that category. I know with landscape photographer of the year comp - the title itself is a bit weird. To me landscape/astrophotographer of the year should be based on a portfolio rather than a single image. But they just don't work like that. I had a look at your website by the way - fantastic images.

Another creative image. Thinking outside the box at how you can visually interpret Sirius. Its a competition, they want unique images.

Give the guy a break please. It may not be everyone's cup of tea but is still a striking image, a creative approach to a familiar subject and an image that will capture the imagination of many people. It's not some beginner image with a Photoshop filter applied, it took skill and creative thought to create the image entirely in camera. Hopefully it will inspire people to learn about astronomy and look up at the sky. Take a look at his website, he's a deserving winner in my opinion. I love his halo image of Venus.

Thanks. It's a stack from a 60 second avi - stacked in AutoStakkert with 50% of the frames.

Thanks, I think the high contrast helps with impression of sharpness. Just updated the image - I think the original was actually oversharpened.

They also used camera movements (such as lens tilt) to manipulate the image plane to achieve their sharp focus

Thanks. No I manually aligned each mono image to RGB channels in photoshop and then layered them up and used the timeline in photoshop to animate. Took hours! Sure there is a better way.

Thanks. Yes seeing was dubious at best.

That's the point .... the story is your own personal interpretation. It may not work for everyone but I'm sure it will inspire many people.

Ah, get what you mean, but I'm not sure that would even work on astro would it? Everything is too far away.

I assumed it was stacked as has a lot of detail for a single exposure. However single or multi exposure doesn't matter - its still unique and as you say tells a story which it key to its success.

But you could also argue why bother at all when you can just browse the Hubble Archive 🙂

Could not agree more.

Thanks. The problem is there are thousands of images of M31 that are all very much the same as mine and many are far, far better. The winning image introduced a unique perspective to it.

When I first saw the image I assumed it was a photoshop filter to replicate tilt but when I heard him explain how he'd done it I was very impressed with the lengths he's gone to to create this image. He actually 3D printed an adaptor to hold the camera with about 30 degrees of tilt to the image plane. Basically emulating what you'd do with a tilt shift lens or large format camera movements. I think it's very effective, creative and makes a fantastic and unique image. I think there is a balance to be had between art and science. You are using artistic licence simply by framing up your image - deciding what to include in the image and what to exclude. I've taken many landscapes with large format film cameras and manipulated the image plane in camera with tilt, shift and swing to achieve the right result. The image simply uses traditional photographic techniques that have been used to manipulate the image plane in-camera pretty much since the dawn of photography.

Thanks for the info, it's amazing to be able to see localised weather conditions on Mars from back garden. I wish I'd taken more now as may have made that shadow more obvious as it approached terminator, I could not see that until ran it as an animation next day.

Thanks. It's well worth a go, I really enjoyed it. I'm used to fully automated deep sky but this was hard work as I didn't really know what I was doing and it was all new to me. I was using sharpcap and had to constantly switch filters and exposure (loads of IR, G, B 1 min exposures for 2 hours). I don't know if you can automate that in sharpcap or not but I've now found FireCapture can do this and run a repeating sequence so will definitely be using that next time, it looks brilliant for it. In all it used 35GB of disk space to create.

Great image, personally like the second version best. Much brighter nebulosity works much better for me. I've also recently taken out Topaz trial. I've mostly used Imagenomic Noiseware on astro but Topaz gives far smoother results. Used carefully it's certainly a very useful tool. Pretty certain I'll buy it when I can afford but might wait for a discount code.

Had a 6d modified with Astronomiser earlier this year. Fast and efficient and camera is great.

Very interesting. I was very tempted to a 268 and had concluded it was 17.5mm but could not figure out how to attach it to a rasa 8.

Great image, that cloud stands out well.

After photographing Mars last night I turned to the moon for the first time in many years. This area really particularly struck me, I love the details and contrast of textures. Taken with 250PDS and ZWO 1600MM Pro and a 3x barlow. Updated version with less sharpening artefacts: Original

This is my first attempt at an animation of Mars. It was taken this morning between 00:12 and 1:55 UTC. It's a bit flickery, I think I need to move to Firecapture as that seems to have preset exposures per filter. Taken though a 250PDS (which needs better collimation) with a ZWO 1600MM Pro. 3x Barlow so 3600mm focal length. It was a lot easier to frame up with a larger sensor and then to reduce resolution on capture. You can see the light patch (dust storm or cloud?) visible last night move from centre of frame to left edge. Mount Olympus is visible and looks to me to develop a shadow as it moved to the terminator.

It certainly was localised on mars. I have a sequence of it tracking across the planets surface

Nice. Hard to get any detail on Jupiter at all currently being so low.