Welcome to the September 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 October 15th at midnight EDT.

Here are the entries for September!

Beginning Imaging's Finalist - jeepizoid:

A September Moon Mosaic
Orion 120mm f/8.3 refractor
SVP Mount unguided
Badder moon and skyglow filter
Phillips Spc900nc webcam
12 avi stacked in Registax 4
with an average of 120 frames per picture
12 pictures stitched in autostitch
final processing in Jasc Paint shop pro 8
sharpen,unsharpen mask and resize
captured in Mesa, AZ. In my yard between 1:00 am and 2:00 am Sept 22 2008

DSLR & Digital Camera Astro Imaging & Processing's Finalist - honza.ho:

Here is my "218 Megapixel" mosaic of emission cloud in Cygnus.
This color multiimage mosaic contains 29 tiffs - each composed from 6-8 single shots. Imaged half year.

Info:

Exposure time: 45 hours of (13-16 mins/1600 ASA subs)
Optics: Skywatcher ED 80/600mm reduced by Vixen 0.67x to 402mm/F5
Camera: Canon 400D modified
Guiding: 6-7 hours manually then with Autoguider
Date: Spring/Summer 2008 (since May to September)
Processing: 2 weeks of - Preprocessing (DSS), the rest of work (stitching together, matching the color of adjacent frames, removing gradients) - Adobe Photoshop

CCD Imaging & Processing's Finalist - Jim Lafferty:

Here is a slice of NGC 7000. Imaged with TOA130 with reducer and my ST2000xm camera with Astrodon filters from Redlands, Ca. The mount was my NJP Temma 2. 70-80-70 minutes each of binned SII-Ha-OIII with 80 mins of unbinned Ha as a luminance layer

Solar System Imaging's Finalist - iceman:

Venus, Mercury, Mars and Spica Conjunction
20th September 2008
Canon 350D + Sigma 17-70mm lens
17mm, ISO100, 1.6s exposure, f/7.1
Long Jetty, NSW Australia
Processed in Raw Shooter Premium and Photoshop.

Sketching Forum's Finalist - markseibold:

I would hope to see others lunar sketches in the monthly contest so perhaps this may inspire. It is the largest work that I have attempted as free-hand of the moon yet. Thanks to seeing Rich Handy's tutorials. This is on a fine textured Strathmore paper in Stygian Black in 19" X 25" that I found to be flawed with vertically parallel embossed lines through it after I began the work.

The moons disc was created with a home-made extended string fashioned compass and chalk pencil from another small compass hinge pin. The lunar disc is drawn at 14" diameter. The size did not allow to finish details on the first night in early September 2008 (moon date at 8.5 days), so I continued the central maria regions on the second night at 9.5 days, but left the terminator untouched. While finishing the details on the second night, I added the quick close-up sketch of Mare Imbrium on 9" X 12" Artagain paper if only to represent the feature of the fading light at the terminator edge at bottom. Some surface details in the mare area were left out or omitted due to time allowance. Pastels included new Rembrandt, antique Sargeants, and Prismacolor in various white and off-white, Swan Stabillo antique chalks in various greys. Faber Castell white chalk pencil. Minimal blending was done with cotton swabs.

*The two pastel sketched images were photographed with a digital camera under natural daylight, then sized and joined as a single theme and effort with use of Photoshop for online display here.

Observed through a 10.1" f/4.5 Coulter Dobsonian with a 32mm eyepiece. Seeing was considerably good at approximately 8 ~ 9/10. Temp 60 deg F, dropping to 57 F with still air on both nights.

Good Luck to all our finalists!