Hi Fraz,
Since I'm the one that does the
APOD I will respond.
I also ran the photo contest on AF. With AF.net I took all of the images posted each month and placed them in a Poll. Then the members selected which image, for each category, was a winner. We then took those and selected a photo of the month. It's very difficult to describe just how difficult that was to accomplish, it took well over 4 hours to compose the polls. Then we discovered that in total there were just a few members voting. Also we discovered that there were some instances of "loading" votes.
I tried that here and it just didn't work. We ended up with tie votes and then the TEAM picked the winner anyway.
So I decided to just do an
APOD and run with that. I don't really have a 'criteria' that I use, it's just based on which image I think should get the award. We do have a topic where members can suggest an
APOD image
viewforum.php?f=104 as you can see we don't get a lot of them.
Hopefully this helps you to understand the reasoning behind what we are doing.
If you (or anyone) has suggestions we are always willing to listen!
Gordon
Scopes: Explore Scientific ED80CF, Skywatcher 200 Quattro Imaging Newt, SeeStar S50 for EAA.
Mounts: Orion Atlas EQ-g mount & Skywatcher EQ5 Pro.
ZWO mini guider.
Image cameras: ZWO ASI1600 MM Cool, ZWO ASI533mc-Pro, ZWO ASI174mm-C (for use with my Quark chromosphere), ZWO ASI120MC
Filters: LRGB, Ha 7nm, O-III 7nm, S-II 7nm
Eyepieces: a few.
Primary software: Cartes du Ciel, N.I.N.A, StarTools V1.4.