The Office of Astronomy for Education (OAE) is pleased to announce the second round of its astrophotography contest, in a joint endeavour with OAE Center Italy as co-sponsor. Following the success of the first contest, held in 2021, the OAE aims to increase its foundational collection of high-quality educational resources available to astronomy educators around the world.

• An international contest organised by IAU Office of Astronomy for Education
• Competition theme focuses on still images of celestial patterns, and time-lapse videos of celestial patterns
• Cash prizes €750, €500 and €250 for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners respectively, plus €250 prize awarded to 30 entries for still image category.
• Deadline 12 June 2022
• Submit your photos via online form on OAE website (https://astro4edu.org/oae-astrophoto-contest-2022/)

Astronomy is a powerful tool for engaging students and the general public in science thanks to its multidisciplinary characteristics and the relevant discussions it triggers, such as our cosmic origins and Earth as our home planet. It is therefore a potential gateway to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM subjects).

Are you an astrophotographer with an enthusiasm for astronomy education? If so, this contest is for you. Participants can submit images and videos in the following categories: still images of celestial patterns, and time-lapse videos of celestial patterns. The images and videos should be of patterns in the night sky that have cultural significance associated with them. Still images and videos should picture large scale celestial patterns visible by the naked eye, captured in a wide angle (wide field) image. These patterns are of many types and can include asterisms, constellations, dark constellations, dark spots, bright diffuse patterns, and single stars. You are free to consider both the constellations officially recognized by the IAU and also non-IAU-constellations. We particularly encourage you to submit photographs of both ancient and contemporary indigenous celestial patterns, from different cultures all over the world.

This year’s contest will run until 12 June 2022 at noon CET. Submissions will be evaluated by an international panel of astrophotographers and astronomy educators who will consider not only the aesthetic and technical qualities of the images, but also the educational value of each entry in the context of primary and secondary school teaching. In the educational context, it helps to present a constellation in a wide field with other nearby bright stars or constellations visible for reference. A picture may show more than one constellation and other celestial patterns.

The winning participants will receive cash prizes and their images will be made available as Open Educational Resources for teachers and learners worldwide. There will be three winning entries for the category of time-lapse videos of celestial patterns. Cash prizes of €750, €500 and €250 will be awarded for the first-, second-, and third-place entries respectively. For the category of still images of celestial patterns, up to 30 entries will be awarded a prize of €250 each. All winning entries will be published in the OAE’s astronomy education resources collection and the IAU Image Archive under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 International Licence (note that the photographers will still retain the copyright to their images). Moreover, participants are encouraged to allow us to publish their images and videos under a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 licence even if they don’t receive a prize, as long as the images and videos are considered by the jury to be of high educational value.

• Before submitting your entries, please read carefully the competition rules for the 2022 edition, which you can find here.
• You can submit your entries here.
• For any queries regarding the competition, please contact astrophoto​atastro4edu.org
• Results from the astrophotography contest 2021 edition can be found here.
• For more information about the contest rules and the submission process, please check the contest webpage.

Source: https://www.astro4edu.org/news/K7906Jp/

Astronomy education is a powerful tool to teach students about our place in the Universe, and it is also an exciting gateway science to the STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). One of the OAE’s goals is to provide astronomy educators around the world with a foundational collection of high-quality educational resources. While many excellent images are already available for public use, the OAE has identified a number of astronomy-related themes with which educators could use further support.

Participants in the contest can submit images in the following categories: star trails, meteor showers, comets, total lunar eclipses, light pollution, aurorae (still images and time-lapses), wide star fields, Sun/Moon haloes, and time-lapses of the Galilean moons orbiting Jupiter. Submissions will be evaluated by an international panel of astrophotographers and astronomy educators. In addition to aesthetic and technical criteria, the judges will consider carefully the educational value of each entry in the context of primary and secondary school teaching.

There will be three winning entries in each category; cash prizes of €750, €500 and €250 will be awarded for the first-, second-, and third-place entries respectively. All winning entries will be published in the OAE’s astronomy education resources collection under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 International Licence (note that the photographers will still retain the copyright to their images).

Submit your Astrophotos

Before submitting your entries, please read carefully the competition rules, which you can find here.

You can submit your entries here.

More information

The IAU is the international astronomical organisation that brings together almost 12 000 active professional astronomers from more than 100 countries worldwide. Its mission is to promote and safeguard astronomy in all its aspects, including research, communication, education and development, through international cooperation. The IAU also serves as the internationally recognised authority for assigning designations to celestial bodies and the surface features on them. Founded in 1919, the IAU is the world’s largest professional body for astronomers.

Contacts

Office of Astronomy for Education (OAE)
Haus der Astronomie
Heidelberg, Germany
Email: oae@astro4edu.org

Lars Lindberg Christensen
IAU Press Officer
Garching bei München, Germany
Tel: +49 89 320 06 761
Cell: +49 173 38 72 621
Email: lars@eso.org

Links

Astrophotography contest | House of Astronomy (haus-der-astronomie.de)
Office of Astronomy for Education Launches Astrophotography Contest | IAU

petapixel.com – It’s amazing the kinds of space photos that amateur photographers can create from their own backyards these days. Case in point: the high-resolution moon photo above was captured last week by Polish photographer Bartosz Wojczyński. It was stacked together using 32000 separate photos.

Wojczyński tells us that he used “advanced image acquisition and processing techniques,” mapping violet and infrared images of the moon to blue and red channels in the final shot.

It took him about 28 minutes to shoot 32000 photos weighing 73.5 gigabytes using his ZWO ASI174MM monochrome camera, a couple of filters, his Sky-Watcher HEQ5 mount, and his Celestron C9.25 telescope (which is equivalent to a 2350mm f/10 camera lens) — equipment that cost him about $3500 total.

The photography was done from the balcony of his apartment in Piekary Śląskie, Poland:

After the thousands of images were captured, Wojczyński spent 5-6 hours processing and stacking the images together into the 14 megapixel final image. Click here to see the original image in all its full-res glory. Here are some crops showing the details of the photo:

“Thanks to the enhanced coloration, it’s possible to examine the differences in the chemical composition of the lunar surface,” Wojczyński tells us. “For example, the bluish tint of several areas indicates a titanium-rich soil.”

P.S. Wojczyński is the same photographer that made the six-hour exposure of the celestial north pole that we featured last month.

Source: http://petapixel.com/2015/05/04/this-high-res-moon-photo-was-made-by-a-self-taught-astrophotographer/

December 25, 2014, Brunei – After the waxing moon set, clouds began to clear out making tonight’s sky an excellent night to gaze the stars.

I got all of my equipment ready – an Orion Astroview 120 telescope placed on an iOptron Alt-Az mount and hooked my Canon EOS 650D on to the scope – a simple setup to photograph the comet.

Set up the scope, align it with Jupiter and slewed to RA 06h00m16s DEC -32°29’44” to point above the South-Eastern sky.

Spotted! There was a green fuzzy cloud, the comet Lovejoy C2014 Q2, in the constellation of Columba.

The comet was easily spotted in my telescope. It came to my surprise that the comet is now “tail-less” when comparing from my last observation, that was two days ago. Despite of its very faint tail, the coma has now quite a bit brighter than before. Astronomy community reported that was now at magnitude +5, which should be visible to the naked eyes under an excellent dark sky.

So, keep looking up! You never know what may come.

For star charts and Ephemeris for Comet C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy) to guide you  in your observation click here.

Recently in August this year, An Australian amateur astronomer, Terry Lovejoy, discovered his fifth comet, C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy).

The photograph of the Comet was captured from Tutong, Brunei Darussalam last night. It appeared amazingly bright through a telescope and features a greenish coma with a faint tail.

Based on the image above and comparing the magnitudes of the background stars, the comet is currently at about magnitude +5.

At the moment, the comet is hardly visible to the naked eyes if you are in a small city with light pollution. Hence binoculars or a telescope is required to view it.

Reports from astronomy communities said that the comet is still brightening. The comet will be still viewable throughout January next year and it will be at maximum brightness by mid-January 2015.

Read more info about this comet here.