The winners of the 2023 Astrofest Astrophotography Competition and Exhibition were announced at last month’s Astrofest held at Curtin University in Perth.
The winner of the Best Astrotourism WA Nightscape Award was Virat Shah for his image entitled “Desert Dreams”. Trevor Dobson was runner up with “Sentinels of the Stars”. Both the winner and runner up images were taken in the Shire of Dandaragan, a popular destination for astrophotography and dark sky tourism.
Mr Shah’s image expertly captures the golden hues created when the sand dunes absorb the soft glow of the Milky Way stars. Mr Shah said “This night, I visited the Nambung National Park looking for texture and the patterns in the sand. I looked for curves leading to a rising Milky Way and an undisturbed sand dune. I found this dune and then waited until the night to capture the sand dunes and the Milky Way. This turned out to be one of my personal favourite image that I’ve captured in 2023.”
The Best Astrotourism WA Nightscape Award, one of 12 awards in the competition, was sponsored by the Shire of Upper Gascoyne, Shire of Perenjori and Astrotourism WA. The award is for the best nightscape image taken in an Astrotourism Town locality in WA.
Runner up award recipient, Mr Trevor Dobson, took his image of the Milky Way arching over The Pinnacles Desert, also in Nambung National Park. He said, “The Pinnacles are such an amazing location for astrophotography. The area is littered with thousands of these limestone monoliths, which means that composition possibilities are almost endless and one of the reasons I keep coming back here year after year.”
The entire competition attracted a total of 482 entries, an increase of 25% from 2022’s competition. There was also a marked increase of the number of photographers who entered with this year’s competition attracting 110 entrants, an increase of 45% from the previous year, showing an increasing appetite in WA for astrophotography.
Curator of the Astrofest Astrophotography Exhibition, Roger Groom, said “The 2023 Astrofest Astrophotography Exhibition displayed at Astrofest 2023 provided the public of WA a great opportunity to see the breadth and depth of talent in our local astrophotography community. Along with the selected 35 finalist images was a display of all entries, from diverse reaches of WA regions.
Enjoyed by thousands at Astrofest, the exhibition will next be displayed at Perth Observatory early in the new year.” he said.
Carol Redford, CEO, Astrotourism WA said, “The Astrofest Astrophotography Exhibition is a highlight on WA’s dark sky tourism calendar. WA’s Astrotourism Towns offer prizes for the Best Astrotourism WA Nightscape which is one of the exhibition’s awards. Iconic images feature incredible landscapes under the Milky Way and promote our world-class dark sky destinations in regional WA.”
Astrotourism Towns
The Astrotourism Towns Project is supported by 18 regional Local Governments in Western Australia. Together they are developing the dark sky tourism sector of the WA’s Tourism Industry and taking steps to protect the dark night sky asset from artificial light pollution.
Astrofest
Astrofest is WA’s largest astronomy event and has attracted approximately 4,000 people every year since the inaugural festival in 2009. Astrofest is made possible with funding from Curtin University, International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, Scitech and CSIRO – Australia’s national science agency.
