The Biggest Astrofestra In The World

Gracie Fields would have been proud...

I note from the up-and-coming-counter at work that there is to be an Astrofest Astrophotography contest and exhibition in 2016. It's a Western Australian event that will take place at Curtin University ( WA Institute of Technology ) on the 12th of March 2016. Camera Electronic, Shoot Photography Workshops, WPM Group, and Pendoley Enviromental are sponsors.

There are a number of divisions and presentations possible - the little flyer that was on the counter mentions star trails, night-scapes,solar system objects, or deep space images. They say that astro-photos, time lapse videos, and related digital imaging such as 360º virtual reality is welcome. As they are opening the entry to any astronomer or photographer, amateur or professional, who is a resident or visitor to WA...with no age restriction, I guess you could say it is a pretty darned inclusive brief.

An omission, however. No mention of macro shots of stars. Odd, that.

Well, you have until the 5:00PM on the 29th of January, 2016 to get your entries in and the best way will be to pick up an entry form from our front counter and read the technical details that they want for the images. I note they prefer jpeg format between 2 to 5 Mb per file and they set a time limit for the time lapse video of 2 minutes.There are more specifications on the form so make sure you read them carefully. Note that there is a limit of 7 entries per person.

You can use an email to do it, post in DVDs or thumb drives, or use Dropbox to send big files. Of course there are conventions about naming the files and you'll need to make sure they know which files are yours.

Award Categories include:

1. Best Astrophoto Award
2. Best Timelapse Video Award
3. Best New Talent Award
4. People's Choice Award

So far I can 't discover what the prizes and awards are going to be but there is going to be an exhibition of the entries and some of the winners may be published and feature in other presentations. It's all in the entry form.

Their website for this entry is:   www.icrar.org/astrophoto2016

At least your subjects cannot complain that you are making them stay still for too long.