Bintel Astrophotographer of the year 2022
Silver Award winners
Captured at the historic Nimmons Bridge, Newtown. This image is a composite of the Nimmon’s bridge as the foreground, and a stack of sky images taken from just behind the bridge to enable a clear view of the sky.
Foreground: Fujifilm XT-20, ISO6400, F2.0, 020sec, 12mm Samyang
Sky: Fujifilm XT-20, ISO6400, F2.0, 340sec (stack of 17 20sec exposures), 12mm Samyang
Blending done in Photoshop
Comet Leonard
Stacked 30 second images. ASI294MCPro. RASA 8 and Celestron CGX-L Mount.
Stacked in APP edited in Pixinsight and Photoshop.
Moon
High resolution mosaics made from a total of 32,000 video frames. A Celestron C90 MAK (90/1250 mm) and ZWO ASI120MC was used on two nights with 99% and 60% illuminated moon respectively. Small areas of the moon were mapped at 60 fps and the best 90% of each 1,000 frame video run was stacked to produce the final 11 and 21 images that were stitched together to make up the final high resolution mosaics.
lake leschenaultia
Another compiled image to create the star trail effects.
– D850
– Samyang 14mm
– ƒ/2.8
– 7220s
– 6000ISO
Eta Carinae nebula
Fixed my telescope in time to set it up on the only stormy night we’ve had this month staying up until 2am to protect the scope from the rain was worth it as the seeing was basically perfect.
I captured a little over 4hrs of data on The Carina Nebula also known as NGC3372 a massive bright nebula located in the constellation Carina. It’s one of the easiest to spot with the naked eye in a dark sky because it’s the size of 4 moons wide – making it a good target to look at through binoculars.
22x 300s Sii
12× 300s Ha
17× 300s Oili
Total 4hrs 15mins
Equipment
Mount: NEQ6 Hypertuned by Astronomy Academy Perth
Telescope: Skywatcher 10″ Quattro CF @ F3.62 with TS-Wynne 68
Camera: QHY268M @ Gain 56 Offset 50 on HGM
Filters: ZWO 36mm Filters
Programs: NINA, Pixinsight and Photoshop CC
Lagoon Nebula
41 x 240s Exposures at 120 Gain and cooling to -15 degrees celcius. Stacking in Deep Sky Stacker. Processing in Photoshop with Astrophotography Tools. The image is the combination of an unstretched core and stretched non-core region.
Mount: Skywatcher NEQ6Pro, telescope: Skywatcher Esprit 100ED, Filter: Optolong L-Extreme, Camera: ZWO ASI294MC Pro, Guide Scope: ZWO 60280, Guide Camera: ZWO ASI120MM (USB2)
43 Hours of Cent A Galaxy, LRGB
Captured with ZWO 1600mm cooled, Filters, EFW, EAF, Celestron Edge8HD, 0.7x Reducer, on a Skywatcher EQ6R.
I imaged from my backyard in Bathurst, aproxx Bortle 5. I use a telegizmos telescope cover to save a lot of setup/packup time.
Editing this on was kept fairly simple.
One of Cent A’s jets, Jet A, which emanates from the galaxies black hole, is visible (lower Right thirds intersection). The hardest part was handling all of the Lights and calibration frames over so many nights for all the different filters.
Rho Ophiuchi 12 panel Mosaic:
Imaging Telescope
William Optics Gran Turismo 71 / GT71
Imaging Cameras
ZWO ASI533MC Pro
Mounts
Sky-Watcher EQ6-R Pro
Filters
Optolong UV/IR cut
Accessories
ZWO OAG (Off-Axis Guider)
Software
Adobe Photoshop · Pleiades Astrophoto PixInsight · Stefan Berg Nighttime Imaging ‘N’ Astronomy (N.I.N.A. / NINA) Image taken over 7 nights in May June July with varying sky conditions
Each Panel consists of about 40 X 240 second subs. Mosaic done in Pixinsight using Mosaic by coordinates tool.