AUTOMATED ARTISTRY

The world’s premier astrophotography competition, Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year, has an award dedicated to images captured remotely. The Robotic Scope special prize is open to all astrophotos taken with a telescope that is operated over the internet. Over the years the category has seen some of the most incredible deep-sky images of the competition, views that would be beyond the capability of most amateur telescopes, but that’s not the only approach you can take.

Last year’s winner, Robert Smith, opted to make use of an instrument little-used by amateurs, the slitless spectrograph on the Liverpool Telescope at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory in La Palma. This device splits incoming light into its composite colours to show the different wavelengths being emitted by each. His resulting image (pictured left) of the Cat’s Eye Nebula in Monoceros and the Ring Nebula in Lyra is not only artful, but scientifically intriguing. This year’s competition opens for entries on 27 February. For more details, visit www.rmg.co.uk/astrophoto