Winners of the 2018 Astronomy Photographer's Contest at the Royal Observatory of Greenwich



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American photographer Brad Goldpaint has defeated thousands of amateur and professional photographers from around the world to win the title of 2010 photographer for the Astright Investment Astronomy magazine of the Royal Observatory of Greenwich. the exhibition of winning photographs

It is a mono-image image and not a speculative composite. Located on a peninsula on the south coast, this street is located in a night lighting area. When the lights go out, nothing hinders the view of the stars to continental Europe, on the other side of the Channel. The scene can be perceived as incongruous or surreal and almost shows how much we are used to the loss of the view of the night sky because of light pollution. The photographer deliberately chose to stage the lampposts off, indicating that it would be possible to repair the damage and restore grandiose views.

The winners of this year's Royal Astronomical Observatory Photographer of the Year Award were announced.

American photographer Brad Goldpaint, winner of the contest, will receive a cash prize of £ 10,000 ($ 13,000).

He has defeated thousands of amateur and professional photographers from around the world to win first prize.

Judges were captivated by Mr. Goldpaint's impressive image – taken in Moab, Utah – which represents a majestic composition of immense red rock formations with the glorious Milky Way overhanging on the right and the Andromeda galaxy to the left.

Competition Judge Will Gater said, "For me, this beautiful image is emblematic of everything that means being an astrophotographer; the balance between light and darkness, textures and contrasting tones of earth and sky and the photographer alone under a starry vault of a scale and beauty to cut the breath. "

His image takes pride of place in the award-winning photography exhibition inaugurated at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.

Winners in all other categories, including the young astronomy photographer of the year, will receive a prize of £ 1,500 ($ 1,900).

The winners receive prizes of £ 500 ($ 650) and rewards of £ 250 ($ 320) for highly recommended entries.

This photo was taken just after Christmas at Sycamore Gap, Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland and showcases the majestic Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy. The temperature was about -4 ° C and the photographer arrived from Lancashire at 11am but had to wait until 2:30 for the moon to set and all the stars to be visible.

The Eta Carina nebula, or NGC 3372, is the largest and brightest nebula in the sky and is located in the constellation Carina. It is mainly made up of hydrogen, created when the bright orange star, located in the center left, has gone to nova, releasing large amounts of hydrogen, which now emits light to the length wave of alpha hydrogen. The photographer took and stacked several shots and treated them in Pixinsight

The photographer's father taught him to focus the telescope, capture and process the data. Once the telescope was installed, the photographer began taking pictures of the Moon's surface and even managed to capture more detail than his father had done before.

Under the dark Namibian sky, the photographer set his camera for six hours in order to capture the CrA molecular complex, a vast, dark, irregular area located in the northern part of the Corona Australis, where we can see nebulae at reflection. NGC 6726-27 -29, Bernes 157 dark dust cloud, NGC 6723 globular cluster and other objects. It is interesting to note that there is a huge distance difference: less than 500 light-years for the dust complex and 30,000 light-years for the globular cluster.

The dark Namibian sky was the perfect place to capture the wonders of the Witch Head Nebula and Rigel. The Witch Head Nebula is a very light cloud of molecular gas illuminated by the supergiant star, Rigel, the seventh brightest star in the sky and the brightest star in the constellation Orion.

Nearly 5,900 light-years from the road, towards the southern constellation of Centauri, is a beautiful and large nebula known as the Lambda Centauri nebula. The intense light coming from the stars of a young open group shines the surrounding gas of a magenta hue coming from the emission lines of ionized hydrogen atoms. In the center of the image is a group of Bok globules, which are dark, dense patches of gas and dust that collapse and new stars are born frequently. They were discovered in 1950 by the South African astronomer A. David Thackeray. They are now known as Thackeray Globules and are a prime target for astrophotographers in the backyard. The largest globule consists of two distinct clouds that overlap slightly. Although they seem small in the context of the great nebula, these overlapping globules each measure 1.4 light-years and together contain more than 15 times the mass of our Sun.

The image shows a very rare conjunction of two brilliant comets, both exceeding the famous group of Pleiades stars in Taurus at the same time. Comet C / 2017 O1 (ASASSN) is on the far left, while C2015 ER61 (PanSTARRS) is in the center. The two comets have very different aspects. The entire region is steeped in the low cloudiness of the Taurus molecular cloud. The photographer used a remote telescope located in Mayhill, New Mexico.

The dark skies of summer in Denmark and the ideal weather of May 22, 2017 allowed the photographer to capture this magnificent orange glow on Limfjord, a beautiful place located just five minutes from the place where he lived for six years. The weather was so calm and calm, which led the photographer to think that the weather had stopped

On January 31, 2018, a spectacular total lunar eclipse occurred. The photographer set his camera on a four-hour battery. After taking about a thousand images, he finally captured an image that reflects the changes in the color and brightness of the Moon before, during, and after the eclipse. The photo reminded the photographer of the Compliant Golden-Hooped Rod, the weapon of the Monkey King, described in ancient Chinese literature.

An early Monday morning before taking an exam at school, the photographer decided to go out and take pictures. By photographing with a 50mm lens, the photographer was lucky and captured this incredible photograph of a meteor flying over the Dolomites. On the left side of the image, the moon shines on the beautiful landscape of the Alpe di Siusi. The autumn colors on the sea were only illuminated at 13.5%.

In the space of one year, the photographer has managed to digitize the details of the surface of each planet in our solar system from his own garden. At the beginning of the year, the photographer captured distant Mars eight months after his opposition, sporting a tiny polar cap and dark features. Later, he captured Venus, then Jupiter and Saturn. In September, the photographer had photographed for the first time the details of the rock face of Mercury. In November, he had recorded the polar region separate from Uranus, completing the ensemble. The most challenging planets, Mercury, Uranus and Neptune, required infrared (IR) imaging to bring out the details of the surface and were colorized to match their more normal visual appearance. All images are displayed at the same relative size as they appear on the telescope

The winter cold weaves a transparent cover over human settlements. If one rises above this coherent surface of fog, the trails of colored stars can be brought closer to the glowing lights of the cities. This extremely long capture sequence took half of the winter nights against the northern clear sky while the Almach circumpolar star, also known as Gamma Andromedae, was on the horizon.

Still relatively far from the Sun, the comet's well-developed ion tail shines brightly in the night sky. The emission of exceptionally abundant and fluorescent ionized carbon monoxide (CO +) molecules under the increase of sunlight is largely responsible for the beautiful blue hue

In order to capture this mesmerizing image, the photographer chose the area according to the weather forecast to ensure that he would get a clear sky. The image shows the solar corona in all its splendor during the total solar eclipse of the month of August. It is flanked on the left by the blue star Regulus – the little king – and by the red planet Mars on the right. The numerous radial streamers of the solar corona are a real crown for the sun king and the crown can be traced on nearly 30 solar rays. The total exposure time of 100 seconds has been recorded in more than 120 individual images. It is a configuration composed of both a fast lens f / 1.4, at full aperture to get the most signal possible and from a large buffer camera to the ISO base. to avoid overexposure. The inner crown was recorded using a longer focal length configuration

In this image, the photographer managed to capture ephemeral significance just hours after this active region produced a massive X9.0-grade solar flare. Near the solar branch and presented here in an inverted format (black to white) and enhanced colors to create a warm and sunny glow, the photography showcases the beautiful 3D structure of the chromosphere of hydrogen. Captured in a 656.3 nm hydrogen alpha light, the photographer used a 150 mm solar telescope and a monochrome artificial vision camera to record a stacked video sequence to bring out the fine details and techniques of image processing to produce color effects and backlit. the characteristics of the spicule around the solar limb

AR2673 is a sizeable group of sunspots that formed in 2017. The beautiful "rice grain" structure of the paler, outermost area of ​​sunspots is clearly visible.

Inverting the image is a legacy of deep sky imaging, where thin extensions of galaxies and nebulae may be more noticeable in a negative image, as our eye can more easily detect dark, subdued details against a backdrop. White. This is also useful for imaging the moon, as it reveals soil characteristics that are otherwise difficult to detect, such as ray systems. Low-contrast areas, such as lunar seas and ray systems, seem much more interesting as low-contrast details are revealed and, according to the photographer, this is a new way of doing things. explore the moon.

Shortly before sunset, a thin and graceful Venus hangs in the western sky, barely 10 days before meeting the Sun at a lower conjunction. It is an infrared image of this view, taken with the help of a monochrome digital video camera mounted on a reflector telescope. The recording has been processed to remove the blurring effects of our atmosphere and combine the video images to create a unique still image of the planet. The infrared filter used on the camera helps stabilize the effects of atmospheric motion

The photographer planned to capture a high-resolution image of the morning crescent moon for a long time. The waning crescent moon only rises very high above the Carpathian Basin skyline in autumn, but at this time of year the weather is mostly cloudy and rainy. Fortunately, in October 2017, an anticyclone swept the area, allowing the photographer to take a good-resolution shot, capturing the special atmosphere of the thin crescent in a glittering sky.

The NGC 3521 spiral galaxy is located about 26 million light-years away in the constellation Leo and presents a complex scene, with huge amounts of surrounding dust and wandering stars shining away from its disk. The photographer's color data emerged from a brilliant range of contrasting color shades, generated by aging yellow and red stars, whiter, more aggressive stars that burned, and various nebulae on the disc. This image includes about 20.5 hours of exposure time and data collection in different types of filters.

During a total solar eclipse, the brightness of the solar corona masks the details of the moon to the human eye. But by superimposing several digital exposures on this image by 2 seconds to 1 / 2,000th of a second, the photographer has managed to reveal many more. The image highlights not only the brilliant solar corona, but also the newest moons, seen here illuminated by the sunlight reflected on the Earth.

This photograph is a mosaic of 24 images and shows how the Messier 31 and Messier 33 galaxies appear symmetrically on both sides of the Mirach star. Although they are the two galaxies closest to ours, they are still far more distant from us than Mirach, who is a star in our own Milky Way. We can also see the two smaller satellite galaxies of M31, M32 and M110

This was the last opportunity in 2017 to see the Silver Core of the Milky Way before sinking below the horizon. She was accompanied by the gradual appeal of the Scorpion Curtain announcing Orion's upward trend in the sky. Meanwhile, the shooting star season has arrived quietly. The image is sewn from twenty images

It was the photographer's first attempt at solar imagery and came from the observatory in her backyard at Wimbledon. She used her father's sunglasses and, after following her father's advice, the photographer beautifully captured our nearest star, the Sun. The photo is a mosaic of two stacked images that have been merged into Photoshop CC, cropped and inverted. The final image was then converted to false color

After a few days of cloudy skies, the photographer finally got the chance to use his birthday present, a new telescope. The clouds were moving fast, so there is not much time to capture the moon. With the help of his grandfather who was constantly moving the telescope and trying to keep an iPad in the right place, he managed to capture this wonderful and artistic image of his first vision of our moon.

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