July 21st, 2018: Astronomy Photography

The Insight Investment Astronomy Photographer of the Year award, 2018 shortlist has some amazing photographs.

Holding Due North
Jake Mosher (USA). A weathered juniper tree in Montana’s northern Rocky Mountains is filled with arced star trails and in the centre sits Polaris, the brightest star in the constellation of Ursa Minor.

Cable Bay
Mark Gee (Australia). The magnificent Milky Way stretches across the night sky reflecting on Cable Bay near Nelson, New Zealand.

A Magnificent Saturn
Avani Soares (Brazil). In high resolution planetary photography having a good view of a planet is a key factor but also completely out of a photographer’s control. In this image the photographer was lucky to capture our second largest planet, Saturn, in all its glory.

Guarding the galaxy
Jez Hughes (UK). The Milky Way rises over some of the oldest trees on Earth: the ancient bristlecone pine forest, at the Inyo National Forest, in the White Mountains, California.

Thunderstorm under milky way
Tianyuan Xiao (Australia). A glorious Milky Way looms over a thunderstorm that lights up the Florida sky.

Honestly I like these pictures better than the pictures of nebula and shit.
I can relate to them better I guess, being an earthling... or at least temporarily stationed here. ;)

link

Camera sensors just keep getting better and better on high end cameras.

I love my camera, but wish it had a better sensor to capture starlight. I can take good pictures of the moon though.

Do you have an old Canon? If you do, you might want to check out CHDK, where you can control all the parameters of the camera, well beyond the limits built into the factory software. It won't change the physical sensor, but it will let you turn it up to eleven.