Wycombe Astronomical Society

Photo Competition -2011

The competition was started in January 2011 and is normally held bi-monthly.  There are two classes, beginner’s and advanced.

March -Beginner's class

Winner - Richard Jenkinson

It was my first attempt and I would think judging by the various photos I took between

10 to 30 secs. this would be a 30 sec exposure due to the slight hue, I think F 8 but cannot be totally sure






May - Advanced class

Winner - David Godwin

M81 M82&NGC3077.

80mm refractor,Canon EOS 450 with 0.8 Focal reducer.

30 x 1 min plus 10 dark frames stacked.

May -Beginner’s class

Winner - Morton Hardaker


Canon EOS at prime focus 150mmm Skywatcher Refractor

on Celestron SE Alt/Az mount 4x125 sec stacked.


July - Beginner’s class

Winner - Jan Dell

Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ5  Taken on 11.6.2011at 21.29 hrs

Shutter Speed 1/30 sec Aperture Priority F4.5

ISO 100 (No processing done)


July - Advanced class

Winner - Pat Clough

Shot from Woodrow with a DBK41 colour camera on a Edge HD 8"/ CGEM mount.

Conditions were better than average, with less atmospheric turbulence than usual.

It is a montage of 6 frames, each frame is a stack of about 200 frames from a 500 frame AVI.

AVIs were stacked and Wavelet sharpened in Registax 6.

Resulting frames combined and brightness matched in Photoshop CS3,

further High Pass sharpened and text added.
















The Trophies.
The centre two are retained by the winners, the outer two are awarded annually, with engraved nameplates.

Winners for the 2011 competition

Beginner’s - Morton Hardaker - awarded the ‘Silver’ trophy

Advanced - Pat Clough - awarded the ‘Gold’ trophy

The full ‘League table’ can be seen in the members’ area

March - Advanced Class

Winner - Chris Rowland  "Rosette Nebula"

Telescope Oynx ED80 80mm F/6.25 Piggy backed on a NS11 GPS

Camera Atik 383L+

73 x 3 minutes binned 2x2 Baader Ha filter

18 x 3 minutes binned 2x2 Baader OIII filter

Processed in Maxim, Ha as red, OIII as green and blue.

Images taken over three nights, on the 6th, 7th and 8th of March.

The OIII data was pretty sparse, and I would have expected better from

the Ha data but some of the evenings were pretty cloudy.


January - beginners class

Winner - Morton Hardaker

"Orion through the Trees"

January - Advanced class

Winner David Godwin

"Comet Hartley 2 collection"

November  Advanced class

Winner - Pat Clough

Milky Way Very Widefield

Shot from Nare Head, Cornwall 23/8/11

The best dark sky site that I have found so far- my transportable observatory

(otherwise known as a motorhome) can just be seen bottom left.

EOS 20D, Sigma 8mm lens, on CGEM DX mount

3 x 5 minute exposures, f4 @ 800ISO stacked and adjusted in Photoshop

November - Beginner’s class

Winner - Morton Hardaker

Composite of two photos to show Prominences and some surface detail.   

Clubs PST and Canon 500d using eyepiece projection with 5mm and 13mm Baader Hyperion eyepieces.  

Assembled and adjusted using Photoshop.



>> Go to 2012 competition <<