Wheat-dogg's World

The Royal Observatory at Greenwich and Sky at Night magazine sponsor an astrophotography contest each year. The 2011 winners are highlighted in a slide show at the BBC website.

This is the overall winner, a mosaic of Jupiter with two of its moons, Io (left) and Ganymede. The details on all three images in this composite are amazing, and that’s what impressed the judges, too. Damien Peach used a Celestron 14-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope with a Point Grey Flea3 CCD camera to capture these images.

I want to highlight this one at left, too, because it shows a feature of our solar system not commonly seen.

It was the winner in the Newcomer category, and shows the zodiacal light from a farm in Texas. You have to have exceptionally clear, dark skies to capture the zodiacal light, which is the very faint reflection of sunlight from the gas and dust within our own solar system.

Harley Grady took this image with a Canon EOS 5D Mk II DSLR camera with a 16-35mm lens, which shows what you can do with fairly simple equipment. All you need is a good tripod, or some other sturdy support, clear skies and some patience. Long exposure times bring out details our naked eyes cannot see.

You can also see the winners, picked from nearly 800 entries, at the Sky at Night website.