Fifteen Eighty Four

Thank you to everyone who submitted! If you missed us this time around, don’t worry—we’ll be holding another photo contest for Comet ISON this winter. And the Summer Stargazing photo contest winner is…

Jellyfish Nebula and Region S249.

Photo by: César Cantú

This is the first telescope’s light FSQ106, after adding the focal reducer to fit into a 385mm focal length, as with the camera FLI8300, allows you to frame a truly spectacular wide fields, as in this case by photographing the nebulae classified as IC443 for the Nebula Medusa Jellyfish Nebula or in the right and the left IC444. The first is a planetary nebula, which sheltered a neutron star that exploded about 30,000 years ago and left a very large carryover, is located about 5,000 light years away. In the picture the nebulae are flanked by the stars Mu and Eta in the constellation Gemini. It’s a picture from 5:30 hours of exposure.

Here are the runners up:

Clear Skies on the 220 John Muir Trail

Photo by: Eric Leifer

Clear Skies on the 220 John Muir Trail

Photo by: Eric Leifer

Trifid and Lagoon Nebulas

Photo by: Phil Baker

Object: 2 frame mosaic of the Trifid and Lagoon Nebulas shot in narrow band and colorized as per the Hubble Palette.
Camera:  Starlite Xpress SXVR-H35
Filters:  Baader 7nm H alpha, 8nm S2, 8.5nm 03
Exposure data:  H Alpha 10 X 20 min ea frame
S-2            6X20 min ea frame
0-3             6X20 min ea frame
Scope and Mount:  Takahashi TOA-130N   @ f7.7 + field flattner, NJP mount
Guiding via:  Takahashi FS-78 with Starlite Xpress Superstar autoguider
Camera and autoguider control via Maxim DL
Image processing:  Maxim DL and Photoshop CS-6

IC443 Horsehead Nebula

Photo by: Bill Snyder

Description and Equipment Used:
Scope            Planewave 17in for Ha /  RCOS 12.5 for RGB
Camera           Apogee U16 for Ha / SBIG 11000 for RGB
Count             ParamountME
Filters          Astrodon  LRGB  Ha5nm
Exposures        RGB  2.8hrs  each     Ha 8.3hrs       Total time  16.7hrs
Color data provided by Martin Pugh

View all of the submissions in this slideshow. You can also check them out on our Flickr and Pinterest pages.