Congrats to all the winners and everybody who made the trip out to Parkes for the weekend. I'd like to echo Rob's comments below by way of thanking the organisers and encourage more people to make the trip out for this event next year and the opportunity to meet and catch up with photographers from around the country.
Parkes may not be the centre of the known universe (except perhaps during the Elvis festival
), but for this Astrofest weekend each year it certainly is the centre of australian astrophotography and astronomy and is much more than just an awards ceremony. Through connections presumably via both John Sarkissian and David Malin, the calibre of presenters is hard to match. You get to hear from the people in the middle of Australian radio/visual/IR professional astronomy about their research projects and plans for our involvement in the mega scopes of the future, our impressive pedigree in designing and building instruments for them as well as human stories of the involvement of The Dish in the Apollo (and other great) projects including meeting people who operated the console during the first moon landing. There is nothing else like this event and I leave it humbled and inspired each time.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rob_K
I should add my thanks to CWAS for putting on a great weekend, with a special thanks to John Sarkissian for the amazing effort he put into organising and co-ordinating events.
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I'll also add my nod to Paul's great image. He has put a ton of work into his observatory, his gear and capturing mega data for this image. But that was just the start. The processing of this M42 image is superb and gob-smacked me when i first saw it. It would have been easy to make a meal of that much data but the result looks beautiful. I'd like to see the print backlit on an EL panel for maximum effect though!
Congrats to all the winners (with a nod to my ASV colleagues as well). Looking at the low-res images on the short-listed webpage did not prepare me for the quality that they display when you get up close to them. It's a very fine set of images.
I'll understand if I one day find my camera booby-trapped by Marcus or other egalitarian photographers seeking a more equitable distribution of prizes :-) (I'm not quite sure how I did it this time) but I look forward to being in Parkes again next year, prize or no prize(s)!
On weekends like this it feels great to be part of a very fine community of like-minded Australian astrophotographers.
cheers!
Phil
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