Welcome to the December 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 January 15th at midnight.

Here are the entries for December!

Beginning Imaging's Finalist - fishmagnet:

IC 443 the Jellyfish Nebula is a supernova remnant located in Gemini. Imaged 12/30/08 at Camp Zyxlor in Saint Cloud Florida. Vixen ED103S f7.7 refractor and SBIG ST-10E guided by an AT66ED refractor and Meade DSI ccd. Five ten minute sub exposures in luminance and seven five minute subs each in red, green and blue. Processed in MaxIm DL4 and Photoshop CS3.

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

NGC 281 (Pacman Nebula) Closeup
Exposure: 37 x 8' (5 hours total) + 20x8' darks
Date: October 23rd, 2008
Location: Henry Coe State Park, Morgan Hill, CA
Imaging Scope: C9.25 with Optec 5.0 focal reducer
Camera: Canon 40D, modded with UV/IR filter
Guiding: StarShoot AutoGuider on Orion 80mm ShortTube w/ PHD Guiding
Mount: Takahashi EM400
Processing: PixInsight & Photoshop

CCD Imaging & Processing's Finalist - dsnope:

Supernova Remnant Sh2-240 in the constellation Taurus. Also called Semeis 147. There is a rapidly pulsating neutron star inside of it that is thought to be the remnant of the star that caused the catastrophe.

One of the dimmest objects in the night sky, this supernova remnant requires long exposures to capture it's wispy filaments. It is over 3 degrees wide, or about the width of 6 full moons. I used a 300mm camera lens to cover that wide field of view. With my best background levels getting within 10 ADU of the dimmest signal, imaging this object led to an education in the minutiae that degrade images. Nearby lights and lower altitude subframes led to slightly higher background levels and tossed frames, imperfect focus and wind gusts caused reduced S/N and FWHM and some more tossed frames. I used the best 9 out of 18 subframes.

STL11000 Camera w/ 6nm Ha filter
Canon 300mm F/4L lens
Mach1GTO Mount
9 x 30 minute exposures
December 28-29, 2008

Solar System Imaging's Finalist - zAmbonii:

Just after the December 12th 2008 full moon.

Canon 300D on Celestron C6-N at prime focus. CG-4 Mount.
50 subexposures ranging from 1/1250s to 1/4000s at ISO 100
Stacked in registax, deconvolution in AstraImage, post processing in PS CS3

Sketching Forum's Finalist - markseibold:

The November 30th 2008 Great Conjunction. The scene so talked about at the beginning of December 2008 which became the most photographed lunar planetary conjunction in in photographic history. As I drove through evening fog heading west in east Portland Oregon, I witnessed a scene of the new crescent moon setting in the western sky with Jupiter and Venus above. I raced home to grab my portable Nexstar 5i and to a hilltop where I could observe the moon above the fog to render the surface details at the terminator. The street scene was added later at home from the memory of driving.

Sketched on Strathmore 19" X 25" Artagain Paper with various pastel chalks.

Good Luck to all our finalists!