Welcome to the February 2008 Cloudy Nights Imaging/Sketching Contest poll!

Each month the best images selected from the individual Cloudy Nights Imaging and Sketching forums will be presented for the userbase to vote on. The monthly winner receives the coveted Cloudy Nights t-shirt! At the conclusion of the poll, the entry with the highest total will be the winner of the contest..

Please choose your favorite out of all the images. This poll will remain open through March 15th at midnight EST.

Here are the entries for February!

Beginning Imaging's Finalist - JSnuff1:

M45 The Pleiades 1/31/08

Imaging: WO FTL 110 TEC @ F/6.5, SBIG ST4000XCM
Mount: Losmandy GM-8 auto guided with internal SBIG guide camera

18x600s Reduced aligned and combined in CCDSoft, touches in PS2.

Film Astrophotography's Finalist - AstroBobo:

here's my eclipse sequence:

Mamiya Super 23 (medium format, 6x9), 100mm lens, Kodak E200. One shot every 6 minutes. Unfortunately thin clouds interfered, so the sequence looks uneven. Minimal postprocessing, cropped.

DSLR & Digital Camera Astro Imaging & Processing's Finalist - Igor Chekalin:

NGC2264 "Cone" and "Fox Fur" Nebulas

H-alpha channel taken on Feb 12, 2008
8 frames x 20min @ ISO1600, Astrodon 6nm Halpha filter
Ambient temp. -5C

RGB (unfiltered) taken on Jan 6, 2008
10 frames x 20min @ ISO1600
Ambient temp. -17C

Here is (Ha)GB-composition. Scale is about 30%.

Self-modded 350Da in prime focus of Mizar 110/800mm Newton.
EQ6-Pro Syn Scan mount.Autoguided with 75/600 refractor + QHY6 CCD.

Processing - Iris & PhotoShop 9

CCD Imaging & Processing's Finalist - dietmar:

NGC 2392 - the Eskimo nebula

Date: 8.11.2007
Location: 35 km north of Linz
seeing 7-(8)/10; transp. 8/10

Scope: 9" TMB Apo f/18 (TV Big Barlow)

CCD: SXV H36; 18x4 min L; 7 darks; R,G,B 5x4min @ f/9 (RGB seeing 5/10)

Software: AstroArt4 image acqu. guiding, preprocessing: Maxim DL, CCD Sharp, Registax

Processing: postprocess. PS CS2; Pix Insight LE

Solar System Imaging's Finalist - Bart Declercq:

Saturn

Taken 2008-02-10 01hUT
from Zottegem, Belgium

Telescope : Celestron C9.25 at F/27 (using Skywatcher Shorty barlow extended to 2.7x)
Camera : The Imaging Source DMK31AF
Filters: Astronomik RGB interference filters in an ATIK manual filter wheel
Image alignment & quality estimation using ninox (AKA ppmcentre)
Stacking and slight waveletting in Registax - stacked 4000 of 9999 frames R, 5000 of 9999 G and 6000 of 9999 B
Post-processing (RGB-combine, additional sharpening and denoising) in Photoshop CS2

This image was taken in quite exceptional seeing conditions by Belgian standards.

Sketching Forum's Finalist - kraterkid:

Subject: Naked eye view of the lunar eclipse on February 21, 2008

Time: 8:59 PST to 9:07 PST
Seeing: Antoniadi IV
Weather: Cloudy with intermittent light showers
Phase: 359.2 deg
Colongitude: 86 deg
Lunation: 14.05 Days
Notes: A perfect bite, a bit hazy about the edge
Medium: White Conte' Crayon on black Strathmore Artagain paper
Sketch size: 9" X 12"

Good Luck to all our finalists!