IAU’s Office of Astronomy for Education
Astrophotography Contest - Edition 2023
1.

General

One of the goals of the IAU’s Office of Astronomy for Education is to provide
educators world-wide with high quality astronomy educational resources. One of said
resources is a multi-lingual astronomy glossary where each concept is illustrated
with a suitable image or video. While many astronomical phenomena can bedepicted with publicly available images from professional observatories, we haveidentified some key concepts that can be better illustrated with images taken byastrophotographers, either experienced amateur astronomers or beginners in thisfield.
To fill this gap, the OAE is launching the third edition of this astronomy contest for anumber of categories listed below. Images and time-lapses videos will be evaluatedby a jury of astrophotographers and astronomy educators on the basis of their visual,technical, and educational value. Winners will be awarded cash prizes, and theirentries will illustrate the OAE astronomy glossary under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
Details on the categories, submission, prizes and other rules of the competition aredescribed below.

2.

Categories
1. There are 5 categories in this contest. The jury will select up to 3 winning
entries in the first four categories listed below and up to 6 winners in the last
category.
2. Below we describe the characteristics that the jury will value in each category.
Given that the images and videos will be used for educational purposes toillustrate these astronomical concepts, submissions should adhere to theseguidelines as closely as possible.

Still images of phases of Venus: Images of variations of light hitting Venus.
The goal is to show that astronomical objects other than the Moon can beobserved in phases from Earth. It can be single images or a mosaic of images
showing different phases of Venus.
Still images of the day arc of the Sun and solargraphs: Images of theapparent trajectories of the Sun across the sky. The goal is to show how theSun's path or day arc traces the apparent motion of the Sun in the sky as
seen at a fixed location as our planet rotates around its axis and revolves
around the Sun, illustrating the varying day length and Sun’s altitude
according to the change of seasons. Solargraphs can be captured with along-term exposure set of solar arcs.
Still images of sunrise and sunset locations over the year: A mosaic ofimages showing the sunrise or sunset from a single location over different
times of the year. The goal is to show how the location of sunset and sunrise
change throughout the year.
Time-lapses of rotation of Big Dipper or Southern Cross: Time-lapses
videos of either the Big Dipper in the Northern Hemisphere or the SouthernCross in the Southern Hemisphere. The goal is to clearly illustrate the Earth’srotation and apparent motion of the stars in the sky.
Still images with smartphones: Astrophotography images taken exclusively
with smartphones/mobile devices. This can be of one of the categories aboveor any other topic. The goal is to highlight that high quality images can also betaken using popular devices instead of only fancy and professional cameras.
Please be aware of specificities for this category as noted in section 3.

3.

Eligibility
1. There is no restriction on the date when the images were taken. Images
taken before the competition starts will be accepted.
2. By submitting an entry, participants agree to these rules and guarantee to theOAE that:a. the image/video is their own original work and was taken and processedby themb. does not violate the copyright (or any other rights) of third parties

c. does not include defamatory or obscene content
d. has written consent from any person that can be identified in theimage/video
e. Group entries are allowed. In this case, each group must nominate one
representative for the purpose of submission and subsequent
communication. This representative must have the written consent of theother group members to submit that entry.
3. Some degree of processing and enhancing is allowed, as is common inastrophotography. But given the educational purpose of these images/videos,
the jury might disqualify entries that significantly misrepresent thecorresponding astronomical phenomena. In particular, the following
processing techniques are not allowed:
a. Using different focal lengths for the foreground and background.
b. Foreground and background images at different locations, or atsignificantly different times of the day (the latest doesn’t apply for thecategories of the day arc of the Sun and solargraphs of sunrise and sunset
locations over the year).
c. Any kind of manipulation, such as cloning or painting over the image.
d. Any kind of artificial intelligence usage.
4. Submissions with watermarks, names, copyright lines, or any text or marks ofany kind are not allowed.
5. Members of the jury, OAE staff, OAE Centers and Nodes staff and their
immediate relatives cannot submit entries to this competition.
6. NAECs are eligible to submit entries to this competition. If a NAEC is also
staff of one of the OAE Centers and Nodes or jury, the previous rule (number5) prevails.
7. Specificities for the category of Still images with smartphone:a. Only photos taken exclusively with a mobile phone or tablet areaccepted.
b. The use of telescopes and lenses are not allowed and will not be
considered for evaluation.
c. The use of stabilizer systems, such as tripods, is allowed.
d. The submitted photo must contain EXIF data. Photos submitted without
EXIF data will not be considered for evaluation. In case you are working with

star trails, deep sky stacking or any other similar techniques for which this is
not possible to provide the EXIF data, the jury can request the original photos
that include the EXIF information.

4.

Submission
1. Images should be submitted as JPEG files with at least 2000 pixels along theirwidest dimension. This doesn't apply for the phases of Venus category since
single frames of planetary cameras usually don't have a resolution higher thanHD. Videos should be submitted in MOV, MPG, MP4 or AVI formats, andshould be no longer than 3 minutes.
2. Entries must be submitted by 30 June 2023 at noon CET. Latesubmissions will not be considered.
3. Entries must be submitted via this form. If you have any problems submitting
your entries please contact us at astrophoto@astro4edu.org and we will try toarrange an alternative delivery system. Do not send your images or videos byemail; submissions by email or any means other than the form above will not
be accepted unless this has been explicitly agreed upon beforehand with theOAE.
4. When submitting your entry, you are asked whether you allow us to publish
your image or video under a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license even if it
doesn’t receive a prize, as long as the image or video is considered by thejury as of high education value.
5. You can submit only one entry at a time. If you wish to submit multiple entries,
you have to fill out the form each time.
6. Each participant can submit up to 10 entries in total to this competition.

5.

Prizes
1. For the category still images with smartphones, the jury will select up to 6winning entries, all receiving the same cash prize:a. 100 EUR
2. For all the other categories, the jury will select up to three winning entries,
which will be awarded the following cash prizes:

a. First prize: 750 EUR
b. Second prize: 500 EUR
c. Third prize: 250 EUR
3. For group entries, the cash prize will be transferred to the contact person who
submitted the winning entry.
4.

6.

A given participant can have only one single winning entry in any of thecategories, although he/she can have a winning entry in more than onecategory.

Judging
1. The OAE has appointed an international jury of astrophotographers andastronomy educators. Entries will be evaluated based not only on theiraesthetic and technical merits, but also on their usefulness as educational
resources to illustrate the corresponding terms in the OAE astronomical
glossary.
2. The jury reserves the right not to award some or all the prizes in any category
if they deem that no entries meet these requirements.
3. The organisers might contact participants in case of doubts regarding theveracity of their entries, and might request additional material such as raw
images and EXIF data for verification purposes.
4. The decision of the jury on the winning entries is final.

7.

Use of images/videos
1. All participants will retain the copyright on their entries. Winners grant theOAE the right to publish their entries under a Creative Commons Attribution
4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). This license allows anyone to shareand adapt the images/videos for any purpose, even commercial ones, as longas proper credit is given. This human-readable summary of the license does
not substitute the actual license, which can be found in this link. Please readthis license carefully.
2. Non-winning entries will not be published under this CC BY 4.0 license, unlessparticipants agree to allow OAE to use their images even if they are not one of

the prize winners. We encourage participants to voluntarily release theirentries under this license, or a similar one accepted by Wikimedia Commons,to enrich the pool of multimedia resources available to educators.
3. To promote the OAE astronomy glossary in general and the winning entriesthemselves in particular, said winning entries will be published in various
popular-level astronomy magazines worldwide.

8.

Liability
1. By entering this competition, participants guarantee that they are the sole
copyright owners of their images/videos. Should the OAE receive any right
infringement claims from third parties, the affected participant will be required
to compensate the OAE in full for any losses.
2. The OAE reserves the right to suspend or terminate this competition, toextend the deadline, and to adjust the competition rules.
3. These rules prevail over any other contradicting information found elsewhere,
unless otherwise explicitly noted.
4. Should parts of these terms and conditions be ineffective or should there be aloophole, this shall not affect the effectiveness of the remaining parts. The
invalid or missing parts shall be replaced by terms which come closest to thepurpose of the contract and the statutory regulations.
5. The OAE is not liable for damages resulting from the impairment of theavailability of the competition site in the event of technical disruptions andevents of force majeure that cannot be influenced, or attacks by third parties
against the competition site. The OAE will, however, try within the scope of its
possibilities to guarantee the reliability and functionality of the competition site.
However, the OAE does not guarantee that the competition site will function
properly on the devices used by participants.

9.

Applicable law

The OAE Astrophotography Competition is an undertaking of the International
Astronomical Union (98-bis Blvd Arago, F–75014, Paris, France). As such, French
law applies in the event of disputes. As far as legally permissible, the place ofjurisdiction is agreed to be Paris.

10. Data protection
The OAE guarantees the highest possible standard of data protection within theframework of the competition and observes all relevant legal regulations. The OAE
will not pass on personal data to third parties or sell address data. The OAE storesthe personal data of the respective participants exclusively for the purpose of thecompetition. Participants hereby expressly declare their consent to the storage anduse of the personal data provided for the above-mentioned purpose.