Welcome to the January 2009 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 February 15th at midnight.

Here are the entries for January!

Beginning Imaging's Finalist - DaemonGPF:

M42 (9 panel mosaic) Taken with Starblast 4.5" scope, DSI II color, no filters, no darks, no flats, no bias. Outer 8 panels are 10x120sec, center panel is 10x120sec, 10x60sec, 10x30sec, 10x15sec, 10x8sec layered together. Processed in Photoshop and Nero Image processing.

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

M78 and Barnards Loop in Orion

Taken over 2 nights 1/24/09 and 1/29/09
Central NJ
TeleVue NP101 at F/4.3
Celestron CGE ST-4 guided
Modified Canon XT and IDAS clip filter
28*480 second 800 iso subs
59*150 second 800 iso subs
Dark/flat/bias calibrated

CCD Imaging & Processing's Finalist - Dean:

Witch Head Nebula - IC 2118

Dean Rowe
Location: Bailey, Colorado
Dates:01/19/2009-01/21/2009
Telescope: Takahashi Epsilon 180ED
Mount: AP1200
Camera: STL11000 with Astrodon LRGB filters
Exposure: 555 minutes LRGB 285:90:90:90, 15 minute subs, binned 1x1

Solar System Imaging & Processing's Finalist - siriusc:

Saturn with its moon 'Rhea' - starting a Shadow Transit.
Captured (1/22/09, 9:14UT) from the Chiefland, Florida 'Astronomy Village'.
Meade 10" SCT at F/44, Superwedge, JMI electric focuser, Celestron 2X Ultima barlow plus two extension tubes.
Dewbuster 1amp, homemade (vented) dew shield.
Philips (SPC900NC) webcam, no filters. settings; 5fps, 1/5 sec/exp, gain: 36%, white balance (manual) red: 34%, blue: 19%, brightness: 83%, gamma: 83%, saturation: 91%.
Processing: RegiStax v4, Post Processing: Microsoft Digital Image, stack size: 1,450 frames.

Sketching's Finalist - markseibold:

Moonrise with Saturn - Pastel Sketch on 19" X 25" format-

Tuesday night January 13th in very still air at 33 degrees F, yet poor seeing conditions, I decided to observe the moons spectacular terminator line with my 10.1" f/4.5 Newtonian and render this impressionistic and somewhat accurate pastel of the moons terminator line and as it was low and ‘warmed in color’ by the atmosphere. A 32mm Plossl was used for the general whole moon and a 12mm and 9.7mm for medium close-up details although the bad seeing (5/10 ?)did not allow much magnification.

A spectacular phase it was! I spent about an hour from Jan 13th 11:45 PM PDT till 1 AM Jan 14th roughing in the terminator and other key details, then retreated to indoors with use of a several digital photos I took through the eyepiece with a 9.7mm Plossl for close-up and 32mm for wide field for reference to recheck positions of and fill in the mare and other general surface features.

As Saturn was a few degrees above left of the moon I decided to add it in here, albeit a little out of distance scale from the moon yet showing the poor seeing conditions, I could barely make out Titan to the planets left, it is to accurate scale in apparent size to the live observation of the moon with a 32mm plossl at low power.

The paper was not what I would have preferred, a 19" X 25" Strathmore in rich blue with embossed ridge, my last available sheet. An undesired ridge-line shows through the surface. The moon was sketched at 15 inches diameter with various pastel chalks and mostly kept in the warm golden range of colors due to the appearance of it rising low in the atmosphere. I photographed the pastel image today in daylight for accurate pastel color representation.

Mark

Good Luck to all our finalists!