Sorry can't decide, so its two from me, and its two from him.
The Andromeda Galaxy
Possibly the biggest, boringest, most photographed subject after the Orion Nebula.
M31 is still a stunning beauty I hadn't experienced. After my stroke five years ago my possibilities of any astronomy took a huge dive. Not able to travel and walking to the letterbox (in suburbia) puts me into fatigue badly. Down to one working body side makes existing a massive chore. Add to that M31 is not visible ever from my around my home and this wishlist item was close to impossible for me try to photograph.
In stepped and old colleague from work I was on good terms with. His wife had suffered a stroke long before and he came back into my life knowing how important the support would be. And it was. One day I asked if he'd be willing to take a late night trip somewhere I could try to photograph M31, so we hit up google street view looking for places we could drive and pull over where there werent trees, houses, or bright lights in front of us where M31 would reach its height of about 13 degrees above the horizon (from here in Canberra thats it really).Worked it out and went out one evening to scope it out. very good spot I thought, nice and dark, away from traffic, basically the driveway of a plot of land for sale. was bad clouds but I snapped a couple of shots to plate solve back home to confirm I had direction and estimates all good.. spot on, there was a long flat unobstructed view to the horizon and directly north was a dip/break in the distand mountain ranges so just needed to figure ideal times for M31 transiting. I was shooting DSLR from tripod so no tracking I extended my exposure time a little as I didn't know how faint to expect M31 on the night, giving me slightly streakier stars than I prefer but was willing to manually register over weeks as a result in order to get a picture. I wasn't expecting to be able to faintly see it with my eyes, nor that it would be so large in the shot, in the end when we went to shoot it was easier than I expected. It was the first time my friend had spent outside observing the sky etc he started to talk about Andromeda from his old studies and the interaction of other beings with Andromeda so I opened a skymap on my phone and as he told the tales the various entities he mentioned are there as constellations right along side. It was an epiphany for us both that these ancient legends are written across the stars, not merely convient source for naming. Knowledge of one helps understand the other. And we came from the opposite knowledge start points. It meant heaps to me to get that chance especially from someone who had been out of my a long time. Very unexpected source of support and friendship. So no longer an impossibility with the right help I'd love to go again and gather more images.
This data set is so meaningful and precious to me I've re-processed a number of times with new skills and techniques I learn and spent months of care trying to wring the quality at each step I currently could. I think its a good picture in the end (not "good considering") not great and certainly not an ideal setup to capture with. But it has a depth of meaning that makes it one of my favourites.
Now I'm Cooking
My other favourite is the
Transit of Venus 2012. This one hit me hard from different unexpected directions. I had missed the previous transit so when I found out about this one it was truely a once in a lifetime chance for me. I think it started about 8mths out for me, first challenge was learn how to photograph the sun. Researching all that I got the correct baader white light solar film and built a threaded filter to go on my longest lens at the time and started photographing the sun. Each time I was refining how to focus and adjusting settings for crisp shots, evaluating each evening and noting adjustments to try next time. I spent several months refining my settings and coming up with the manual settings I wanted to use for a good nonoverexposed sun shot at midday and also went out at dawn to see what the morning sun would come out like, figuring it'd be less bright early morning and late arfternoon and the transit was going to take i think about 8hrs. I ended up settling on using bracketed exposures to cover me for a time around dawn and sunset. I had it all documented and would test as best I could on clear days.
Next item: was the transit even visible at all from my home. Well, yes, Canberra was lucky too because the entire transit was above the horizon not just part of it. My goal was first to get one photo during the event I was happy with, so all I needed now was line of sight to the sun during that period... easy just find a patch of lit ground to stand on. Hm I think what about trees, powerlines etc getting in the way. Out behind my place was an open area along a busy road so easy to pop out there and stand in any number of places to shoot. great now to plot where the sun would touc the horizon and peak in the sky then go outside with compass etc and figure out where it would travel across the sky from a fixed place I hoped to set up the camera on the day.ended up picking three spots that would have clear views at different times, noted down. Next my goal of one shot seemed unambitious so I used Starry Nights to Simulate the suns position ever hour and made a photo of it. Next I figured a string of pearls effect would be nice so I figured out a pleasant spacing so I could work out and simulate the times to achieve it. All looking good, times planned now, go back to checking shooting location spots for those time to ensure the sun was going to be clear of possible obstructions. Now the only thing left was the weather. Which forecaster to believe and were any able to forecast weeks ahead and could I alter to various forecast locations. I was figuring if weather was bad from home I could grab a lift or taxi out to lake george if weather there was much better as it has plenty of spots to get unobscurred sky views, youd be hard pressed to find where your view could be obscured at all out there. So that was my fallback.
T minus 2 weeks the good weather broke and clouds rolled in to drizzle, and kept rolling in and settling to drizzle. 14 days and nights of cloud cover no sign of the sun or stars ever it seemed. Day after day my enthusiasm from my planning was dropping and dropping. Morning of the transit I woke up before dawn and was confused looking out the window.
what are those white dots... omfg stars!! I run outside (this was pre-stroke so I could run) and every direction I looked I saw starsI ran out back and climbed the embankment to get longer views in all directions and everywhere I looked not a hint of a cloud anywhere. It was almost a religious experience so I set up a picnic blanket, my gear and supplies. i even had my celestron firstscope I'd turned into a white light solar scope for first hand viewing and sharing if any passerby happened along, though none did.it all went well, late afternoonsome patchy clouds would rush through so I wasn't able to get shots at the precise second I wanted while I waited for a cloud to pass etc. Around noon it really hit me suddenly the last time people saw this particular transit event in the four event cycle it was the one a pommy bloke called James Cook travelled to the south pacific just to make observations then afterwards heading home bumped into what we call Australia. It was an amazing connection to history I thought and while the world has changed so much since then its really a timespan of bugger all in the universe. Brought tears to my eyes and I wanted to run out into the traffic behind me and drag people out of their cars to look at the sun and scream at how insignificant wherever they are going is compared to whats happening in the sky at that moment. In the end I was all alone with this experience but I got plenty of shots across the whole day at the planned times. Oh yeah this was a week day too so I'd booked leave months ahead and said dont even think about calling me for any reason.
Prior to he event I had also been aware of a university project in Germany to redo the calculating the sun earth distance project which Cook was a part of by asking for volunteers from around the globe to take photos on the hour so they could be measured etc. I wasn't sure I'd be able to offer any shots worth using so only volunteered the day after. From memory most contributors were slack and took shots like 30sec after the hour, close but not good enough for precision needed a few of those I had the hour precise shots plus some spare shots after the hour closer to those other submitted shots so they could maybe still be used. I think in the end I was the only contributor in the southern hemisphere to capture shots for the entire event. So I didnt feel quite so useless to the project in the end, results achieved and published in German, got it as a pdf but need to trawl ebay to find the print version I guess. My little useless contribution to science, we didnt improve existing values or anything. All of this experience for me was full of highs and lows and uncertainties and I highly recommend people read Chasing Venus which tells the tale of the project cook was involved with and the monumental hardships for indiviuals and everyone involved in co-ordinating on a global scale. For those not in the know the earth sun distance was needed at the time to work out longitude from observations that could be taken aboard a ship. Ships ruled the world at that time and existing measurement had to be made at solar noon from a fixed point on land on two consecutive days. So to be able to do it from aboard a moving ship vastly reducedthis "downtime" allowing perishable goods and news to travel faster than rival countries. Plus since latitude was easy to determine to a degree or two in order to cross the pacfic or atlantic oceans ships would follow a coastline north our south to say 5 degrees long or 10 or 15 etc etc and then sail east/west along that line until they hit the next continent. It wasnt safe to just head off as you could go in a circle or follow a line that misses land etc. Consequently pirates knew ships would follow hole number longitudes so the would patrol along those lines too to find fat merchant ships out at sea and easy pickings.Ships were what drove empire growth so getting an edge by finding a way to determine longitude at seas was worth huge money to anyone who got it first. At the time most countries were hostile to each other so all sorts of special travel permissions had to be arranged for observers to cross borders to reach remote locations to make observations. They all needed the best optical equipment and state of the art precision timespieces, so not only did they have to battle geography, but weather, language barriers, countries not willing to acknowledge the travel permission and general robbers who could get rich from this fancy high tech gear. The whole endeavour when you look at it was pretty much certain to fail. For some it was a struggle for survival to reach their observing location, others had plain sailing only to fail at the destination due to natives vandalising their gear or poor weather etc. Its a fantastic read and I found myself recognising similar hardships and emotions up and down in my planning etc of the event.
So thats why the transit of venus is one of my favourites.
Both shots impacted me greatly for different reasons and in the end I am not ashamed to show them to others. They could have been better shots but they could have been far far worse.