June 7, 2015 5:37 pm

Announcing the Mission StarTalk Contest, Sponsored by Celestron – MISSION 1

Calling all amateur astronomers and armchair astrophysicists!

Celestron and StarTalk are on a mission to identify celestial objects, and we want you to play along.

Each week for 6 weeks, we’ll show you a photo of a celestial object, taken by an amateur astronomer using a Celestron telescope. Nebulas, planets, galaxies, star clusters, comets – you name it. Literally. Your mission is to identify the object correctly.

For each mission, we’ll pick one winner at random from correct answers to receive a free SkyMaster 15×70 Astronomy Binocular. All correct answers will be entered into a Grand Prize Drawing to win a NexStar Evolution 6 Computerized Telescope. No purchase is necessary to enter. One entry per mission per social media channel. All entries must include the hashtag, #CelestronMissionStarTalk

To volunteer for Mission One, visit @Celestron on Twitter, @CelestronUniverse on Instagram, or Celestron Telescopes on Facebook.

You’ll find your first unidentified celestial object waiting for you now. You’ll also find a link to contest rules and submission guidelines.

Follow Celestron on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook for new mission announcements and previous mission winners every Monday.

HOW TO ENTER

Let’s pretend that the image we’re showing you in this blog post is the image you needed to correctly identify.

Now we know that’s a photo of the Andromeda Galaxy. It was actually taken by pro-golfer and astroimager Jimmy Walker using a Celestron Rowe-Ackermann Schmidt Astrograph.

The correct answer would be either M31 or NGC 224. You may use both, but if one is correct and the other is not, your answer will be considered incorrect. In this example, simply saying “Andromeda Galaxy” would not be a correct answer.

WHERE TO ENTER

As we said, you can find your first unidentified celestial object and submit your answer at either @Celestron on Twitter, @CelestronUniverse on Instagram, or Celestron Telescopes on Facebook.

You can enter once per social media channel per mission, so that gives you three chances to win on each mission.

New missions will begin every Monday, except Mission 1 which begins tonight, Sunday, June 7^th.

And make sure you follow Celestron on whichever social media channel you submit your answer, so they can message you back if you’re the winner.