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News Updates » 21 December 2009

 

Astrophotography Competition Winners!

Many congratulations to the winners and runners-up of the Galilean Nights Astrophotography competition. The judges had a difficult task in assessing the many excellent entries and the winning photos were of outstanding quality. Overall Winner

Masahiro Miyasaka of Japan for the image "Milky Way Waterfall": https://www.flickr.com/photos/43894176@N07/4041205097/in/pool-galileannights

Beyond Earth

Winner: Luis Santo for his image of M42

First runner-up: Richie Jarvis for his image of M45

Second runner-up: ANIC Asociación de niños indagadores del cosmos for their image Moon Waning

Earth and Sky

Winner: Masahiro Miyasaka for the image Milky Way Waterfall

First runner-up: Pablo Díez Vigil for CTBA 07:45

Second runner-up: Kouji Ohnishi for Pleiades Dances

Comments from the judging panel

Earth and Sky

In this category, judging is necessarily subjective since the aesthetic component of the images is a leading parameter. The images from Masahiro Miyasaka show both remarkable artistic talent and technical skill e.g. in the accurate timing - with the celestial bodies at the optimum position with respect to the landscape, clever use of artificial light in some of the images, and of water or reflections on water. By far the most appealing image is "Milky Way Waterfall" for its perfect balance between picture elements. It wonderfully illustrates one of the objects observed by Galileo Galilei - the Milky Way resolved in stars amidst nebulosities. Hence this image is not only the winner in the "Earth and Sky" category, but also the overall winner.

Beyond Earth

According to the competition rules, the diameter of the telescope used to take images in this category was limited, but not the value of the imaging equipment. The best submissions thus comprise wide-field views of deep-sky objects taken with small but expensive instruments. The image from Luis Santo exemplifies how perfect framing, exposure and processing show the grandeur of an object drawn by Galileo Galilei - the Great Orion Nebula and its surroundings. A close contender is the rendition of another Galilean object - the Pleiades - by Richie Jarvis. In a different league of instruments, the very sharp and well-contrasted image of the Moon, taken by a group of children in Colombia with a cheap telescope and a small sensor, is quite commendable.