Noting the smooth background and moody vibe, our judges chose Andrea Girones’ edit of NGC 7331 as the winner of the November 2021 SkyNews Astroimage Editing Contest.
“Vibrant, nice colours/saturation and clean background,” noted one of the judges.
Girones said she used the Level 3 data package and edited the image using PixInsight.
She said she used Weighted Batch PreProcessing (WBPP) script for calibration only of luminance, red green and blue, with cosmetic correction — “many hot pixels!” she noted.
In building the image, she used tools like deconvolution, dynamic background extraction, MultiscaleLinearTransform (MLT), TGVDenoise and a variety of other features.
“What a wonderful galaxy!” Girones wrote.
The contest
Located near Auberry, California, The RASC Robotic Telescope is a 16-inch, f/8.9 RCOS with a SBIG STX-16803 camera on a Paramount ME mount. It has seven filters: LRGB, Hydrogen-alpha, Oxygen III and Sulphur II. A Canon 6D — used to capture larger targets — is piggy-backed on the scope, sporting a 200mm f/2.8 lens.
To learn more about the contest or enter this month, click here.
The prize
Each month, SkyNews will be giving the winner a prize package that includes: access to RASC Robotic Telescope data for the year, as well as some essential stargazing tools — a one-year gift subscription to SkyNews (to use or to give to a friend), a SkyNews folding chair, a SkyNews backpack and a SkyNews red light keychain.
