Hi Folks
I'm not sure how many of you are aware of this competition, but I can highly recommend it for your consideration. For school students the comepetition has been running since 2009 and for the first time this year they introduced a division for amateur astronomers like ourselves.
http://ausgo.aao.gov.au/contest/
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http://ausgo.aao.gov.au/contest/amateurcontest.html
I entered the amateur section of the competition ostensibly to gain feedback to help the students in my school's astronomy club with their entry. The girls will need to try again next year, but I consider myself fortunate to have won the amateur section of this year's competition. The prize was an hours imaging time on the 8.0 m Gemini South Telescope in Chile and my chosen target was Gum-85 (Sh2-54).
As part of the imaging process I spent time with Professor Travis Rector from the University Of Alaska in Anchorage via Skype where he talked me through the various possibilities of capturing the image using either broad or narrow band techniques (Oh how I would have loved to have been able to do both!). Finally I settled on a broad band image using four different filters that was subsequently taken by GMOS-South in early July.
Travis then took me through a series of tutorials on how he processes images from the data collected by the ccd camera attached to the GMOS telescope. And of how he applied these to Gum-85
If people are interested in further details re the exposure times, filters used and the history behind Gum-85 and Colin Gum who imaged it back in the early 1950's I'll start a separate thread.
At the October Starfest in Coonabarrabran (a great event by the way) I was presented with a framed print of Gum-85. I would also like to publicly thank Australian Sky and Telescope for their sponsorship of the competition (I've enjoyed the first two issues of my year's free subscription) and to Professors Christopher Onken and Travis Rector and the other members of the competiton committee for organising the contest and for the knowledge, enjoyment and enthusiasm I've gained from it to be able to dive in and have a go at astrophotography myself.
There is also a brief article about the competition and pictures in the January 2014 issue of AS&T.
The purpose of this thread is just to highlight the existence of the competition to you all.
Paul
PS Mike - would it be worthwhile creating a sticky for the competition to alert current and new members of the forum to its existence?
