Shooting September 27, 2020 from his backyard in Ayr, Ontario, David Jenkins’ image of Mars won Photo of the Week for the week of October 9, 2020.
Imaging at 2:47 a.m. EDT from his backyard SkyShed, Jenkins said he used a 12-inch RCX-400 telescope, a
Moonlight Focuser, and a ZWO ASI290MC.
“I used to use a Monochrome Lumenera SKYnyx2-2M CCD,” he added. “After many time consuming attempts, I’m now sold on the quality and simplicity of the one-shot colour CMOS!”
For this image, he said he stacked the best four per cent (1,057 images) of 26,423 images (20-millisecond frames) using AutoStakkert! and adjusted Wavelets in RegiStax 6. “I used only very slight adjustments of curves and levels in Photoshop 2020 (no changes to colour were applied),” he wrote.
“It’s a nice clean image of Mars,” wrote one of the judges. “The capture and processing details are impressive, and it came out quite well. I find it to be a very appealing image of Mars.”
Our honourable mention for the week goes to Dave Dev for his image of NGC 1333, a stellar nursery in Perseus.
Dev wrote that he captured a total of 7.5 hours of data around September 20, 2020, shooting from Starfest grounds. He said he used a Sharpstar 76mm APO telescope (f/4.5) with a ZWO ASI2600MC Pro.
Prizes for the 2020-21 SkyNews Photo of the Week contest are sponsored by Sky-Watcher, Celestron, iOptron and The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. Click here for more details on the prize packages that will be awarded to the best photos this year.
