Hi all
On Saturday, my family and I headed out to Parkes for the
CWAS AstroFest. Unfortunately I wasn't able to attend the whole conference and listen to the talks or other items on the programme, but did make it for the
"David Malin Awards" - the annual astrophotography competition hosted by the CWAS Astrofest and judged by Dr David Malin.
The competition is growing every year, with approx 130-odd entries over the 6 categories (Solar System, Widefield, Deep-Space, Heaven and Earth, Semi-Professional and Junior). I believe a lot of the extra entries this year can be attributed to the amazing showing of Comet McNaught in January this year.
The overall winner of the competition was Terry Cuttle (AstroTourist) for his
beautiful image of Comet McNaught. As the overall winner, he received a sculpted "bust" of Galileo by a local artist. Very cool indeed.
Terry also took out the Heaven and Earth category for that same shot. I received an honourable mention for my
Comet McNaught in the Hunter Valley shot, taken at Lostock during IISAC2007.
The Semi-Professional section was won by Peter Ward with his image of
Curved Space, and two honourable mentions were picked up by Peter again, and one also for Eddie Trimarchi for his
Gum 34b image.
Peter also took out the Innovation award, for his brilliant
Warped Sky image which appeared on APOD a few weeks ago.
The Deep-Space section had some amazing images and two honourable mentions were picked up by Steve Crouch, but I'm not sure if a winner was announced?
I was fortunate to win the Solar System category with a montage of images from my Jupiter session captured on the 23rd March (
Animation here). I also picked up an honourable mention for my lunar mosaic of the
Straight Wall area captured on the 1st October last year.
The Widefield section was won by Gary Hill (GaryH) for his brilliant 3-image mosaic of the
Core of the Milky Way. Gary also received 2 honourable mentions for other widefield shots, and Ray Palmer also received an honourable mention for his shot of Crux with the Russian rocket explosion.
The Junior section was won by David George for a Moon/Venus conjunction image at sunset.
There were quite a few other honourable mentions worth mentioning but I can't remember them, sorry. I'm sure a full writeup with images will be on the CWAS AstroFest site soon.
The standard of images was very high, and I felt honoured to be among such talented photographers.
Canon Australia sponsored the event with some great prizes for both the category winners and honourable mentions (1 per person). I received a Canon Ixus 850IS, a great little compact digital (7.1mp, 3.8x zoom). My wife has taken claim to it already, I guess she deserves it for being a long-suffering astronomy widow
It was great to meet a few familiar names and faces there, I wish I could've stayed longer, but my family and I were making a mini-holiday out of the weekend so we had places to go and things to see!
I'd encourage many of the other talented astrophotographers here at IceInSpace to enter their images in the 2008 David Malin awards. It's a great experience, and it really helps you think more about your imaging as a whole - composition, presentation, content, processing, etc. In the end, it will lead to a higher standard and a continuing growth of astrophotography in Australia.
Well done to all winners!
2007 CWAS AstroFest David Malin Awards Winners
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Guys, that is fantastic. Congratulations to all the winners. Might have to organize a IIS field trip next year and bring along a cheersquad. 
i understand..............those special bedroom clothes
