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Old 12-07-2019, 08:18 PM
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Paul Haese
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Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Adelaide
Posts: 9,937
Quote:
Originally Posted by andyc View Post
Well done to all the finalists, good luck in the competition! I must admit, I doubt I'll waste my time with the Malin Awards anymore. Taking absolutely nothing away from the really high standard of entries, it's painfully obvious that for Solar System objects, David has very narrow tastes. He is only interested in "Colours of the Moon" or "Narrowband Sun" shots, and if you're lucky, a few eclipses (look at the archives too, it's remarkable!). While they're nice, I find it hard to believe in 2019 that there aren't great planetary images being submitted from the good number of excellent imagers here and elsewhere. 2018 was the best year in all our lifetimes for combined altitude and closeness of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, yet nobody matched two extremely similar Moon shots from Eddie, or a widefield Earth shot?? And hardly any planets have been finalists in the past decade?

It's David's competition of course, and he's an absolute legend for deep sky imaging and a really lovely guy, but the DMA is not the place to submit your planetary pics! [and yes, full disclosure - I did submit a couple, so i know it sounds like sour grapes... but based on the archive, you could accurately predict the shortlisted image types before they came out]. Its a weakness of a competition with a single judge.

I hope Phil takes out the Solar System prize though - gorgeous corona shot!

I have submitted images every year in the solar system section since 2008. Most years I have won a HM at the minimum. Saturn has won a lot of awards and so too has Jupiter for me, so I don't think your observation is entirely accurate. This year I submitted the best Saturn I have ever taken and never got a HM (see attached image). It's a good image but I have no illusions about why it is did not get up this year. I figure this is due to the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 and David wanting to focus on that event and images that show the moon. This makes sense to me. David always surprises people with his choices and your words echo mine quite a few years back when I was struggling to understand why he made the choices he does.

For my pick I reckon I know the Deep Sky winning image already. I know for the fact that David's favourite object is M42 and that image is the sharpest one I have seen for a while (aside from mine in 2014 ). As to the overall winner I cannot imagine who that might be because I always get that wrong, even the year I won with M42 (Dust and Gas). He always manages to surprise us all and the image will be a wonderful image.

I reckon just keep on submitting and you will get there eventually. The planetary section is a tough section to win any award in and I reckon the more people who enter that section the better the competition will be.
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