The contest
Participants in the Lunatico New Year image processing contest all started from the same set of raw astronomical images of NGC 6960—narrow-band and RGB data provided by Lunatico—and applied their own processing techniques—calibration, stacking, stretching, noise reduction, and colour work—to produce the best final result they could.
The contest was open to all Lunatico customers and forum members, and received 21 entries, all of high quality. Judge Harry Page evaluated the finalists on detail, colour accuracy, noise handling, and overall aesthetic quality: "I was very pleased to be asked to judge the processing entries for the quality data provided by Lunatico and of course even with the same data every entry was different."
The winning entry
Congratulations to Steve Benz, winner of the Lunatico New Year 2022 image processing contest! Judge Harry Page on the winning entry: "The small to medium star handling here is done very well keeping a good colour and retaining a nice stellar shape…The nebula itself looks very fine retaining all the highlights and details in the original data." Page's verdict: "I will give it to image 002.jpg for retaining the details in the nebula."
Runner-up
The runner-up was Rafael Rodríguez, with an equally impressive result. Judge Harry Page: "This image is a little softer than the first…The image has been processed to get the most depth out of the data and shows more faint nebula than any entry."
Thank you to everyone who entered. The range of results from a shared dataset shows just how much of astrophotography lives in the processing: skill, taste, and patience.