AbsolutelyN

26 minutes ago, Avdhoeven said:

Just don't call it astrophotographer of the year then, but astro artist of the year... If a jury can't judge quality the competition is doomed. 

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. 

20 minutes ago, Avdhoeven said:

I don't have anything against the photographer in any way. And his site looks ok. The problem is that the jury choose this image as a winner, which is just not what the contest is about. It's this one image which is selected not all his imagery. I'm sorry, but the jury should have done a better job in my opinion. And this is not the first time. Just look up the 2016 winner and you will understand what I mean...

This was it btw:

 

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. 

1 minute ago, CCD-Freak said:

Nice image....was it a single image or a stack?  Looks like the seeing was good.

 

John
CCD-Freak
WD5IKX

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

25 minutes ago, AstroNtinos said:

Excellent image. It's so sharp and magnified that if you were in apollo 11 before landing you would see that picture. Very nice

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

1 minute ago, vlaiv said:

That is rather unfortunate name in today's standards - almost certain to suffer great diffraction blur

 

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

1 hour ago, Jarvo said:

brilliant work. Did you use a separate animation package?

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. 

43 minutes ago, astroman001 said:

Even so, that is a nice animation. Can see how the seeing changes over time as well. 

Peter

Thanks. Yes seeing was dubious at best.

8 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

I think it's a story you wrote, however! 😁

Olly

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. 

2 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

I'm sure it was stacked - at a single focus position.

What I was referring to was following process:

Take multiple exposures at one focus position and stack them. Take multiple exposures at different focus position and stack them, etc - create something like 20-30 images with different focus positions and then compose image by using "strips" of each focus position.

Most out of focus

A bit less out of focus

Very little out of focus

In perfect focus

Very little out of focus (opposite side of focus)

A bit less out of focus (again opposite side of focus)

Most out of focus on the other side

This creates illusion of depth of field or something like this:

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

4 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

Except it is single exposure - I just read the article and indeed it was tilt device.

I expected depth of field stacking instead as tilt often causes other aberrations to appear

 

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. 

2 hours ago, x6gas said:

And why go to all that trouble if you could get exactly the same effect in software?

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

Just now, vlaiv said:

While it goes against what I like about astro imaging - first image of Andromeda galaxy is both technically very demanding and very very nice idea.

It represents image of M31 with "depth of field" feature - like it was right here on a table and shot in a macro mode.

This approach is very technically demanding because it is not single exposure like it has been suggested - this is a composition of many exposures and that is what makes it technically difficult.

People doing macro photography know this as depth of field stacking - when they use fast lens and try to get whole subject in focus by moving focus slightly between exposures. Process in this image is reverse of that - imager needed to capture multiple images of andromeda - some of them being out of focus - to create illusion of depth of field.

Artistically image is very good - as it tells a story about a galaxy in your palm - it shows how a galaxy can be viewed as very small object (needing macro lens to shoot it) - compared to vastness of space.

Could not agree more. 

Just now, gilesco said:

Well, yes, an interesting method, but I still much prefer the image of M31 on your website to the one that won the competition!

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.  

24 minutes ago, gilesco said:

Well this might make for some interesting debate. I saw that article earlier today.

I would term most of the pictures in the article not to be pure astrophotography, but astronomy based art.

When I image, I am trying to get a representation of what is there, this means that I only really modify levels, try out some false colour and automated routines to remove light pollution, calbrate star colours etc...

All my final work should still plate-solve to a location in the sky, and if it doesn't then I've probably applied too much artistic license, and I've left the science field behind.

What are other's thoughts on that?

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.  

20 hours ago, CraigT82 said:

Very nice! The light patch is the orographic cloid over Arsia Mons which has developed nicely over the past few days. I agree with the Olympus Mons shadow development too, lovely stuff! 

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. 

11 minutes ago, skyhog said:

I'm really impressed with anims of the planets, that's very nice. I'm tempted to have a go with Mars entering a more civilised time. I'll have to check drive space, imagine these things produce huge files. Lots of small captures against long captures for the best individual frames? A topic worthy of debate for those who do this probably. 

Ed

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. 

34 minutes ago, Nigella Bryant said:

I think it was localised weather pattern on Mars, didn't appear to be anywhere else on the planet, probably localised around Olympus Mons. As it's one of the highest points around that region that would suggest cloud.

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.