Shooting Mars post-October opposition, Oleg Bouevitch’s incredibly detailed images of the Red Planet were named Photo of the Week on December 4, 2020.
Shooting with a ZWO ASI290MM camera, a Celestron EdgeHD 14-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope at f/22 (with a 2× focal extender) and a Losmandy G11 equatorial mount, Bouevitch captured Mars from Nepean, Ontario, on October 31, 2020. The images, left to right, were taken at 2 a.m., 2:54 a.m. and 3:52 a.m. UTC, and the orientation was north up, he said.
For each image, he caught the following exposures:
- Red filter: Seven two-minute videos at 400 fps
- Green filter: Seven two-minute videos at 300 fps
- Blue filter: Seven two-minute videos at 200 fps
The capture was done with FireCapture, while stacking was done in Autostakkert; derotation in WinJUPOS; wavelets in PixInsight; and curves, levels, noise reduction in Photoshop / Topaz.
This week, we decided to give an honourable mention to two different images, both good in their own right.
Martin Bernier snagged an honourable mention for his image of NGC 1055, an edge-on spiral galaxy located in the constellation Cetus.
“The galaxy has a prominent nuclear bulge crossed by a wide, knotty, dark lane of dust and gas,” he wrote. “The spiral arm structure appears to be elevated above the galaxy’s plane and obscures the upper half of the bulge. [It was] discovered on December 19, 1783 by William Herschel from his home in Slough, England.”
Capturing the image data November 14, 2020, Bernier said he used a QSI 683WSG camera and an Orion Optics CT16 (f/4) to collect LRGB exposures from Saint-Liboire, Québec.
Ian Barredo also garnered an honourable mention for his image of the Flaming Star and Tadpole Nebulae.
Barredo set up his gear in Regina, Saskatchewan, and captured data on November 2, 5, 12 and 21, 2020. Using a ZWO ASI1600MM and Hydrogen-Alpha, Oxygen III and Sulphur II filters, Barredo captured 27.6 hours of exposures for his image.
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.
