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The Winners Of The 2019 Astrophotography Competition Have Been Announced

The Winners Of The 2019 Astrophotography Competition Have Been Announced

The Royal Greenwich Observatory held this Year, Competition For Best Astronomical Photos, And The Winners Were Announced. The Magnificence Of The World Is Visible In These Photos.

Astrophotography, The Royal Observatory Greenwich has announced the winners of this year’s Insight Investment Astronomy Photographer competitionWatching the best photos of this match is not without pleasure.

More than 4,600 photos entered this competition this year, registered in 90 countries worldwide. The judges of this competition made a lot of effort to announce the first to third-place winners of each photography sub-category and the winners of the Robotic Scope category, and the winner of the Sir Patrick Moore Award in the novice photographers category. Then they had to choose one photo from among all the selected photos to be announced as the final winner of this contest for the prize of $12,500.

The grand prize of 2019 was awarded to Hungarian photographer Laszlo Francis, who participated in the photography of the moon. In this photo, he combined 32 shots that he took during the different stages of the eclipse on January 21 in Budapest, Hungary, in one go and displayed a fantastic image.

eclipse

Photographer: László Francsics, title: Into the Shadow

The Royal Greenwich Observatory explained this photo as follows:

These photos were taken from different but very close phases of the eclipse, So combining them in a continuous image showed the earth’s shadow earth. At the edge of the created shadow, a clear blue color indicates the ozone layer’s shadow. A pre-programmed camera took these photos at three-minute intervals and controlled them remotely. The pale stars in the background of these photos were used as a guide to putting the images together, and on the other hand, the photographer was able to show the moon’s actual orbit with their help.

In the continuation of this article, you can see the winning photos of other sections of this contest. For more information about each of them, you can visit the official website of this contest.

Young astrophotographer of the year winner

Red flower

Image: Davy van der Hoeven، نام اثر: Stellar Flower 
Hendrik-Ido-Ambacht, South Holland, Netherlands, 26 February 2019

When the young photographer of this photo decided to take pictures of the deep sky, he searched the Internet about nebulae, and in the meantime, he came across the Rose Nebula. Working with his father, he built a camera and then took different images of the nebula using various filters on three consecutive nights in November. To get familiar with image processing, he first practiced with one of his father’s old photos and then processed the data obtained from his photos.

Aurora photo award winner

Aurora

Photographer: Nicolai Brügger, the title of work: The Watcher
Lofoten, Norway, 9 March 2018

To record this photo in the snowy season, the photographer climbed the Offersøykammen mountains in Norway to capture the fantastic aurora borealis of the Lofoten Islands. To produce this photo, he took a panoramic shot to show the curved shape of this aurora on top of the mountain. He waited for many hours, and finally, after midnight, the beautiful northern lights appeared.

 

Galaxy Photography Award

NGC

Reflection: Rolf Wahl Olsen, NAM Trace: Shells of Elliptical Galaxy NGC 3923 in Hydra
Auckland, New Zealand, May 21, 2017–March 25, 2018

This is an image of the strange elliptical galaxy NGC 3923. In the idea of this galaxy, concentric circular shells can be seen, which were formed due to previous mergers of this galaxy with other galaxies. New research shows that there are forty-two concentric shells in the universe NGC 3923, making it the most significant number of such shots compared to any other known galaxy. If you look carefully at the image, you can see a star stream in the photo stretched to the bottom and the right and then suddenly disappears in a place similar to a circular shell. In this stellar flow is a small circular galaxy, which is said to be one of the sources of the system consisting of concentric shells. This galaxy is falling towards the center of the NGC 3923, and the stars behind it are visible as a trail. There are many galaxies in the background of this photo and in the parts that are more distant and cannot be seen well. Some of these galaxies are visible in the light emitted from NGC 3923, but some are billions of light-years away.

 

Winner of the sun photography award

sun

Photographer: Alan Friedman, Name of the work: A Little Fireworks
Buffalo, New York, USA, July 29, 2018

This photo shows a view of the sun’s edge in state, similar to fireworks. This photo was taken during the minimum solar activity in the 11-year solar cycle. A large part of the sun is reddened relative to the cosmic background. The photographer inverted the color spectrum to show the depth and contrast in the sun’sSun’smosphere well. The information about the photo is first obtained with a black and white camera and then colored according to the depth and contrast.

Man and space award

space

Photographer: Ben Bush, work name: Ben, Floyd & the Core
Hadrian’s Wall, Hexham, UK, August 9, 2018

In this photo, you can see an image of the photographer with his dog Floyd, placed in a ring of Mars, Saturn, and the center of the Milky Way galaxy. This photo shows the photographer’s love for the universe. The photographer owns several dogs that are his companions, But it is usually tricky to use them in night photography. In this photo, the shutter speed is set to 10 seconds to allow the photographer to calm Floyd down. In addition, the ISO has been increased in this photo, and the photographer has been whispering “don’t move, don’t move” in Floyd’s ear continuously for 10 seconds. The photography has been repeated several times to obtain an image with a suitable redness. This photo contains everything the photographer loves about photography: connection with the land, family, dogs, and friends.

Winner of the Planets, Asteroids, and Comets category

Mars

Photographer: Andy Casely, Title: Death of Opportunity
Sydney, Australia, May 26–October 30, 2018

This image showed successive pictures of Mars when Mars was approaching the Sun aSunon, the other hand, the Sun and Mars were on opposite sides of the EarthEarths photo was born in 2018 and showed the progress of a giant Martian storm. This storm destroyed the Opportunity rover. The first photo (May 26) shows the early times of the battery in the volcanic mountains in the Martian spring. This storm will grow over time and become widespread around June 6 to 11th (2nd and 3rd photos), thereby masking Opportunity. This storm continued, and on July 3, only the Tharsis volcano was not affected by the storm. In July, after the Sun and Mars were on opposite sides of the EarthEarthat their closest distance, only phenomena such as Syrtis Major could be seen through the dust caused by the storm, and then, as Mars moved away from the Sun, The usual spectacle of whiteness has started, and its surface has turned to darkness. This is when the south pole of Mars is at the beginning of the summer season.

The winner of the robotics division

saturn

Photographer: László Francsics, name of the work: Infrared Saturn
Chilescope, Atacama region, Chile, August 26, 2018

In this photo, the photographer has tried to show the visible colors of Saturn’s surface, which are very close to the infrared spectrum. For this purpose, he has used two special filters for photographing planets: IR 685 and IR 742. These filters are usually used for two purposes. The first filter, a planetary infrared filter, reduces atmospheric disturbances on photos, and the RGB filter shows the visible effects of the planet well. By choosing these filters, the photographer has improved the range of amateur astrophotography because, with this, he has been able to expand the scope of the color spectrum by 0.4 microns toward the infrared range (620-1150 nm).

 

The winner of the sky photography category

the sky

Photographer: Wang Zheng, the title of the work: Across the Sky of History
Ejina, Inner Mongolia, China, August 12, 2018

The winner of this category is a photo in which a dry fir tree is depicted mystically. The fir tree is resistant to erosion, so an image of abandoned land is formed in this photo. On the other hand, like a falling meteorite, it shows us the fir tree as an ancient creature in an uninhabited desert. This photo was taken in the historical region of Xi Xia Kingdom in China.

 

Winner of the star and nebula photography category

nebula

Photo: Ignacio Diaz Bobillo, Name of work: Statue of Liberty Nebula
General Pacheco, Buenos Aires, Argentina, March 24,

In this photo, you can see two nebulae far from each other. The nebula on the right, called NGC 3576, is closer to EarthEarthits shape inspired the name of this photo (the Statue of Liberty Nebula). Both nebulae are active and star-forming. As a result, their condition and light are caused by busy and young stars, which makes us watch a beautiful array of colorful shapes. In this photo, filters allow only a very narrow light spectrum to pass through. As a result, the resulting image shows colors in harmony with the three-color standard of the Hubble color palette.

 

The award for the best photo of newcomers

Although one winner should have been announced in this section, two winners were finally announced.

 

newcomer

Illustrated by: Ross Clark, Name Effect: The Jewels of Orion 
Embleton, Northumberland, UK, January 30, 2019

The photographer of the first photo, who started astrophotography in September 2018, tried to capture such a photo. This photo shows part of the Orion constellation, the best photography objective in the Northern Hemisphere. This photographer stated that in this photo, he showed how much progress can be made in astronomical photography with an average DSLR camera and a lens. He said he hopes this photo can inspire those who have a photography kit and are planning to start astrophotography. This image is a combination of two 200mm photos.

These two photos were processed in PixInsight, and some basic processing has been done to remove excess lights and calibrate the light on them. Then, these two photos were connected using Photoshop, and with the help of this software, noises were reduced, dust was removed, and the size and color of the stars were controlled.

 

China

Photographer: Shuchang Dong, name of the work: Sky and Ground, Stars and Sand
Ningxia, China, July 25, 2018

The second photo was taken in central China while the moonlight was shining on the dunes. The photographer was present in this area with his friend, and after sunset and moonrise, he decided to record this picture from the starry and glorious sky.

The winning and second- and third-placed images in each category, along with the 68 shortlisted images, will be exhibited at the Astrophotography of the Year exhibition at the National Maritime Museum. This exhibition has been open to visitors since September 13.