Over the weekend of the 19-20 July 2009, the CWAS Astrofest was held at Parkes, NSW. It’s an annual event that also includes the David Malin Awards – Australia’s premier astrophotography competition.

The David Malin Awards are judged by, of course, world-renowned professional astrophotographer, David Malin who was the photographic scientist-astronomer at the Anglo-Australian Telescope for over 25 years (read my Nov 2006 interview with David at IceInSpace).

Australia’s best and up and coming best astrophotographers submit images each year in the hope that at least one of them will make David sit up and take notice. The images are submitted and judged in the following categories:

• Amateur – Wide-Field, Deep Sky and Solar System Objects
• Semi-Professional
• Junior (16 or under)
• Open – “Twilight”
• The David Malin Innovation Prize

The overall winner was the very talented Gary Hill, with his marvellous shot of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) which took out the Amateur Widefield category.

Large Magellanic Cloud by Gary Hill - Amateur Widefield

Please continue reading to find out the rest of the winners and see the images I entered into the competition.

Read the rest of this entry »

I had some nice clear skies on the night of the 14th August, 2009 – when Jupiter was at opposition for the 2009 season. Being at opposition means the Sun, Earth and Moon form a straight line – and Jupiter is at its closest point to Earth in its orbit around the Sun, and it appears at its largest – subtending 48.9 arcseconds.

Unfortunately the seeing conditions were below average, but luckily they steadied for a few minutes just before midnight – long enough for me to capture just one run in slightly above average conditions, before the seeing turned bad again.

Jupiter at Opposition, with the GRS rising

Each channel was recorded for 48 seconds, and 600 frames from each were used to make the final RGB image.

Continuing to hope for clear and steady skies – it’s just not coming this year yet.

Thanks for looking.