Bintel Astrophotographer of the year 2022
Our Winners
1st
Damien Kilmartin
Both images were produced by myself at my home using my 16″ Hubble Optics Dobsonian on a home made Equatorial platform. The image train on both occasions was with a 3x Televue barlow from Bintel and a PlayerOne Neptune CII planetary camera. It is the rough equivalent of around 7000mm+-
The Image of Clavius was a 3000 frame capture again with the Optolong IR/UV cut filter in reasonably good seeing at full resolution of the chip, and a 300 frame stack was produced. Again a sharpen with Registax and colour balance and crop in Gimp as my EQ platform is not great for tracking at 7000mm FL, a light noise reduction also in Gimp with only 300 frames stacked.
2nd
Damir Maksan
Gibraltar Falls Milky Way – Gibraltar Falls, ACT in June 2022. Under a dark moonless sky, the falls were at their best after the recent rains. Thinking I had this view all to myself, a Canadian fellow turned up with exactly the same idea: “I’ve been waiting four months to get this photo!”
Sony A7III using Sony FE 14mm 1.8 lens, 14mm f1.8 20s ISO3200
3rd
Chi Chan
Date captured: 2022-09-24
Location: Wiruna, ASNSW dark site, Bortle 2
Mount: Sky-Watcher EQ6-R Pro
Imaging scope: Sky-Watcher Esprit 100 ED APO
Imaging camera: ZWO ASI6200MC Pro, gain 100, offset 40, -15°C
Filter: No filter
Controller: Intel 8th gen NUC and Pegasus Astro UBP v2
Motor Focuser: Pegasus Astro Focus Motor Kit v2
Autoguider: PHD2 2.6.11
Guide camera: QHY5L-II-M
Guide scope: QHYCCD Mini Guide Scope
Rotator: Pegasus Astro Falcon Rotator
Image acquisition: Sequence Generator Pro 4.2.0.906
Processing: PixInsight 1.8.9-1, Lightroom 6.14
M31 total Integration time: 2 hr 48 min, 84x 120s subs, calibrated with bias/dark/flat
Junior Prize Winner
Lagoon Nebula in Rainbow SHO
Lachlan Wilson
The Lagoon Nebula is a vibrant target when captured with narrowband filters. Using Sulphur, Hydrogen and Oxygen filters, I considered creating an image using the HOO palette which would have made a “truer” image. However, the colours didn’t look right, so I therefore used SHO palette to create the rainbow appearance. As a SHO image is not true colour, the stars often appear a magenta colour which can degrade from the image. To combat this, shorter exposures using red, green and blue filters where used to filter through images that the stars were taken from to create true colour stars. I used a Skywatcher NEQ6 Pro mount that held a Sharpstar AL-90R Triplet Refractor. With a ZWO ASI1600MM camera with a ZWO 1.25”x8pos filter wheel loaded with ZWO narrowband filters, the whole setup was guided using a ZWO OAG with a ZWO 120MM Mini guide camera. The image comprises of 1 hour and 5 mins of Hydrogen (13x300s), 1 hour of Oxygen (12x300s), 1 hour of Sulphur (12x300s) and 4.5 mins per red, green and blue filter (R:6x45s, G:6x45s, B:6x45s). This all totalled up to be 3 hours, 18 mins and 30s of exposure time in this image.
Platinum Award Winners
Gold Award Winners
