New Scientists :Astronomy Photographer of the Year

Star trails, horse heads and shadowy moons are some of the sights captured by stargazers across the world vying for the title of Astronomy Photographer of the Year.

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Horsehead nebula
The Horsehead nebula is a dark cloud of gas and dust 10 million times as massive as the Earth, galloping away from us at 10 kilometres per second.

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Galactic dust in Corona Australis
The Corona Australis or "southern crown" is a small constellation harbouring the closest known neutron star to Earth.

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Eta Carina nebula
This photograph shows part of the vast cloud of gas and dust known as the Eta Carina nebula.

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Orion's bow
The northern and southern lights are among the sky's most spectacular sights.

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Death Valley star trails
Although this photograph appears to show a dramatic shower of meteors, it is actually a 40-minute exposure of the trails made by stars as the Earth rotates.

Venus, Jupiter and moon trails over the Nepean river
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Taken with an exposure time of two hours, this photograph shows the trail of the three celestial bodies rising in the sky at sunset.

Blue Mountain star trails
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As the Earth spins during the 30-minute exposure of this photograph the stars make trails around the sky’s south pole.

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Blue sky moon
The dark areas that can be seen on the moon’s surface in this photograph are vast plains of solidified lava.

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Comet Holmes
Comet Holmes follows a path between Mars and Jupiter and can be seen from Earth about every seven years as a very faint object in the sky.

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Centaurus A ultra deep field
All the stars in the foreground of this image are from our own Milky Way, with the Centaurus A galaxy in the centre, 14 million light years beyond.

reply to post by VitalOverdose


Wow, love the images.
The Universe never ceases to amaze me

S&F my good man, keep up the good work

Wow all of them are really great images.

The long exposure ones are amazing, cant get enough of em!

This photograph reminds me of Vincent Van Gogh's "Starry Night" painting:

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Straight lines indicate the flow of negative charges.
If thats true, what we see above might be an example.

Nice pics. I always wanted to try my hand at astro photography but don't have access to any good gear

Im going to try with my cam next time there is a clear night

S & F!

Great pictures man. Astronomy pictures like this never cease to amaze me. I wish space agencies such as NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Russian space program got more funding. Space is the future, and it is a fascinating place too.

Man, I wish I had known about this so I could prepare an entry, maybe next year if they do it again. The astrotagging concept they talk about is very interesting as well:
www.nmm.ac.uk...

Im guessing there is more than one category for this competition. It would be really unfair to be comparing images like the first 3 in the OP that are artists impressions made from numerical data against the time-laps pics that used real optics.

Originally posted by VitalOverdose
Im guessing there is more than one category for this competition. It would be really unfair to be comparing images like the first 3 in the OP that are artists impressions made from numerical data against the time-laps pics that used real optics.

I'm a little confused by your post...

...are you saying that the first three photos in the OP (The Horsehead Nebula, Corona Australis, and Eta Carina) are artists impressions? I'm pretty sure that they are real photos and NOT artist impressions.

They look like other actual photos I have seen of those objects -- although some of the photos may be false color as seen through different emission-line wavelengths. For example, the redness of the horsehead nebula is a false-color emission-line image taken in hydrogen-alpha (red), oxygen (green) and sulfur (blue).

The color may come from different non-visible light wavelengths, HOWEVER, the images are real.

[edit on 9/5/2009 by Soylent Green Is People]

reply to post by Soylent Green Is People


i watched a program on how they make these sorts of images. Its done by using several different scans of the same bit of sky using radio telescopes . Then they are com-posited on top of eachother and the colors are added to make everything stand out. Then at the end they put the twinkle in a few of the larger stars to make the whole thing look nice. Its an artists impression based on real data.

It takes the artist quite some time to put together..i was surprised to.NASA has a top GFX guy who makes up all the presentation shots.

[edit on 5-9-2009 by VitalOverdose]

reply to post by Soylent Green Is People


yep, for the first one,



from the wiki

Description The Horsehead Nebula (IC434).jpg

English: This colour picture was made by combining several exposures with a 2048x2048 CCD detector at the 0.9m telescope of the Kitt Peak National Observatory. Observing conditions were not ideal throughout, and so only a select few of the original observations were used. The final tally used five frames in the B (blue) filter for a total of 22 minutes, three frames with the V (green) filter, 15 minutes, and two with the R (red), total 10 minutes. Each frame was carefully cleaned, a particularly difficult task for the blue filter due to internal reflection problems in the telescope, and then aligned and combined by computer to create this (approximately) true colour picture. The pixel size on the sky is 0.68 arc seconds; after combination, the final size is 1480x1366, or about 17x15 arc minutes. Orientation of thumbnail image: N to the left, E down.

Since photography is an art form to begin with, it makes no difference that the first three pics are composited images.
The reflect the artistic vision of the persons who work on the project.
Its no different from a regular film photograper who uses the delicate interplay of light and color and film type and exposure, to create the photograph they envisioned, when they shot it.


[edit on 5-9-2009 by punkinworks]