A big thank you to everyone who participated in our HOYS-LCO picture competition over the last few months. After all the entries were in, all members of the HOYS advisory team and the head of the LCO Global Sky Partners Program have voted for their favourites – with the exception of the HOYS PI, because he knew which images were send in by which participant. This was a very difficult task, as all entries were excellent. We have now counted all the votes and the top three entries are as follows:

1st prize: Myles Gibson (Worthing Astronomers)

2nd prize: Mark Seaton (Flamsteed Astronomy Society)

3rd prize: Brian Preston (Stirling Astronomical Society)

A BIG congratulation to our winners!!! And well done to all other participants as well. The winning images are shown on the top with 1st to 3rd from left to right. It was very nice to hear back the feedback from the winners, after we let them know earlier last week.

“I wasn’t sure whether it would be much good compared to others as I’m relatively new to astrophotography.”

“Wow, that is great news and a surprise!!!”

“Wow I’m very surprised and quite taken aback!” 

Due to the support from LCO we have three great prizes for the winners. Both, the 1st and 2nd prize winners will get one hour of observing time on the 1m telescope LCO network for their own use. The third prize is one hour of observing time on the 0.4m telescope LCO network. We will help the winners with all queries regarding the setup and exposure time calculations for their observations, and are looking forward to find out what they decide to observe.

All the winners have agreed to letting us know in a short post about their observations and share the images with us. Stay tuned for some nice images from our participants in a few months time when the data is taken and processed.

For everyone who has not yet gotten around trying to make their own colour images from our LCO data, have a look at the HOYS-LCO website and check out the instruction videos. You never know when the next picture competition might come around.