The Photo of the Week on September 18, 2020, was a flash in the sky — a Perseid meteor streaking over a mountain by Doug Brown.
Shooting from Procter, British Columbia, on August 13, 2020, Brown said he caught the meteor in the northern sky between Polaris and the Big Dipper.
Using a Canon camera with a EFS17-55 lens at f/2.8, he said he exposed the image for 30 seconds.
“It’s a nice sharp image and I like the way that you can see stuff coming off the side of the meteor track near the frontend,” noted one judge.
The honourable mention this week goes to Kimberly Sibbald for her image of NGC 7380 and the Wizard Nebula.
Shooting from Hand Hills in Alberta during the new Moon on July 19, 2020, Sibbald used a ZWOASI1600MM Pro camera with a SharpStar 140PH Triplet telescope with a focal ratio of 910mm. She said she captured six hours and 20 minutes of exposures for the image.
“This reasonably large nebula is located in Cepheus,” Sibbald wrote. “It is extremely difficult to observe visually. Located 7,200 light years away, the Wizard Nebula surrounds developing open star cluster NGC 7380. Visually, the interplay of stars, gas and dust has created a shape that appears to some like a fictional medieval sorcerer.”
“This very clearly highlights the wizard with pointy hat, burning eyes and clutching grasp; many shots of NGC 7380 don’t make that clear,” said one of the judges.
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.
