Atik AstroImaging Competition Results

The votes have been counted, the results adjudicated, our expert panel consulted, and we’re proud to say:

The Winner of the Atik 2015 AstroImaging Competition is

Patrik Tarczi for his incredible image of M106, taken with an Atik One 6.0 on a home-made Newtonian.

It’s not hard to see why so many of you voted for this image. We were blown away by its detail, not just the incredible definition in M106 itself, but also its suspected companion galaxy, NGC 4217 to the right. There are also more faint fuzzies than we can count, let alone name, all complemented by expertly handled star colours. We caught up with Patrik to find out a little more about the winning image.

“I started to deal with astrophotography when I was 15 years old, now I have been doing it for 7 years. Nowadays I am also really close to getting my degree in electrical engineering.

I usually take my photos in the north-west of Hungary, in a little village called Izsákfa. My telescope is a home-made newtonian telescope, with a handcrafted mirror. As far as the winning image is concerned, that was my first publicated image with an Atik CCD.

It took me a lot of nights to collect those photons. As every beginning is, it was a real challenge to get used to it, but when I saw the first light frames, that was a pleasant surprise. I was lucky to catch some clear nights, and the seeing was especially memorable. Since then this is my longest exposure time, exactly 31 hours.

It was a big achievement to win and I would like to thank everyone who appreciated my work.”

An Atik 4120EX camera is now making its way to Patrik. We can’t wait to see more of his images.

Runners Up

This year we have three tied runners up who all amazed us, as well as you, with their talent. So in no particular order, our runners up are:

Álvaro Ibáñez Pérez –  NGC7497 + MBM 50 (Integrated Flux Nebula)

“I’m a spanish astrophotographer. Around 2012 I got into astronomy at my grandparent’s house while looking at the Moon throught a viewfinder of a DSLR camera.

I have now been taking astrophotos for 3 years and being doing it ever since; first with a DSLR and now with an Atik 460ex mono camera. As I live in Madrid, which has a lot of light pollution, I often have to travel over 200km to take photographs of good quality.”

You can find more of Álvaro brilliant images at https://www.facebook.com/AIP.Astrophotography/

Jose Mtanous – 2 pane mosaic of the Elephant Trunk Nebula

“Jose is an active Mexican astrophotograher mainly interested in narrowband imaging. He started imaging the night sky 20 years ago with a 35 mm film Pentax K1000 and witnessed the transition from film photography to digital imaging. He has worked in a couple of research projects with the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) trying to photograph tidal waves on faint galaxies.”

Christian García – NGC 1333

Christian began using an Atik One 6.0 in 2014, and finds that getting although it can be difficult getting away from the big cities, the results are definitely worth it – and seeing this incredible image, we’d have to agree.

You can connect with Christian on his Facebook page under the name Christian García Pérez, and visit his Flickr account to see more of his fantastic images https://www.flickr.com/photos/113060298@N03/

We’d like to say congratulations to our winner and runners-up, as well as another huge thank you to every one who entered, voted in and otherwise took part in the competition. We were absolutely stunned by the quality of images being produced, not just by our winners, but by all the astrophotographers that took part. It’s inspiring to see so many people passionate about astrophotography, so inspiring, in fact, that we might just run another competition in the future…

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