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Subscribe to RSSIn this video from the European Hubble team, Joe Liske (aka Dr J) presents the winners of the "Hidden Treasures" image-processing competition.
The team behind the Hubble Space Telescope has transformed our view of the universe through iconic images such as the Pillars of Creation and the Cat's Eye, but even the professionals can miss some gems — as demonstrated by today's winners of the "Hubble's Hidden Treasures" contest.
The contest, which had its kickoff in March, invited members of the public to sort through more than 700,000 archived images from the space telescope and come up with pictures that have never before been put in the spotlight. The results illustrate how today's software is making it easier for amateur astronomers to do professional-level work.
The Hidden Treasures contest is sponsored by the folks at the European Space Agency's Hubble headquarters in Garching, Germany. Nearly 3,000 photo submissions were received, in two categories. One category was reserved for folks who used color compositing and other image-processing techniques to bring out the best in the Hubble imagery. The other was for folks who spotted great pictures in the archive, but didn't fully process the images themselves.
Ten winners were selected in each category and will receive prizes ranging from Hubble posters to Apple gadgets and autographs from "Hubble-hugging" astronaut John Grunsfeld.
Double-winner
The top winner in the image-processing category, as well as the "People's Choice" competition, is Josh Lake, a 34-year-old physics and astronomy teacher (and volleyball coach) at Pomfret School in Connecticut. Lake told me he was "really surprised and happy" to learn that he was a winner.
"We have our own observatory here, so I've been teaching students to do processing for the past five years or so," he said.
The fact that he won the People's Choice online contest might not have been so surprising, considering that he could enlist students and alumni, family and friends to vote for his picture of the star-forming region NGC 1763. "I was totally blown away to find out that I had won the jury prize, too" Lake said.
Lake said that image processing is "something that I love doing," but it sounds as if he won't be giving up his teaching job for a career in astronomical image processing anytime soon. "I think I would really miss the students and this community," he said. "It'd be a tough lifestyle to break out of, and just go to a 9-to-5 job sitting in front of a computer. ... The work here is hard, but it's life-changing."
Here's hoping that Lake's image-building feat will be life-changing as well. To get a sense of how he did it, check out this three-minute time-lapse video of the process, and then feast your eyes on the finished product:
A time-lapse video shows how Josh Lake transformed data from the Hubble Legacy Archive into a prize-winning picture of the star-forming region known as NGC 1763, using software tools including PixInsight and Photoshop. Music by Sigur Ros: Gobbledigook
NASA / ESA / Josh Lake
Josh Lake submitted a stunning image of NGC 1763, part of the N11 star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud. ESA/Hubble had previously published an image of an area just adjacent to this, based on observations by the same team. Josh took a different approach, producing a bold two-color image that contrasts the light from glowing hydrogen and nitrogen. The image is not in natural colors — hydrogen and nitrogen produce almost indistinguishable shades of red light that our eyes would struggle to tell apart — but Josh's processing separates them out into blue and red, dramatically highlighting the structure of the region. As well as narrowly topping the jury's vote, Josh Lake also won the public vote.
Here are a few more of the contest winners, with comments from the European Hubble team. For links to all 20 images, check out the European Hubble site's "Hidden Treasures" announcement.
NASA / ESA / Andre van der Hoeven
Andre van der Hoeven of the Netherlands came a close second in the jury vote. His image of the spiral galaxy Messier 77 is highly attractive, and is also an impressive piece of image processing, combining a number of datasets from separate instruments into one amazing picture.
NASA / ESA / Judy Schmidt
Judy Schmidt of the United States entered several highly accomplished images into the competition. Her picture of XZ Tauri, a newborn star spraying out gas into its surroundings and lighting up a nearby cloud of dust, was the jury's favorite - and won third place in the image-processing contest. This was a challenging dataset to process, as Hubble only captured two colors in this area. Nevertheless, the end result is an attractive image, and an unusual object that we would never have found without her help
NASA / ESA / Brian Campbell
Brian Campbell's picture of NGC 6300 won first prize in the basic image-searching category.
NASA / ESA / Budeanu Cosmin Mirel
Budeanu Cosmin Mirel won the public vote in the basic image-searching category with a picture of NGC 4100.
More winners in astrophotography:
- 'World at Night' finds beauty in darkness and light
- All-time top 10 from Astronomy Picture of the Day
- The Year in Space Pictures: 2011
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
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This is amazing, Alan. You do bring some fantastic stuff to the public's attention.
I'll bet if you had an odd accent or speech impediment, you'd be this century's version of Carl Sagan, srsly.
=o)
I can clearly see the Virgin Mary in the first shot.
Hmmm... Truly great photographs. Just think - scientists say there could be thousands of earth like planets out there amid all of the thousands of galaxies seen in these photos... !!
By the time "they" develop wormhole travel, or whatever they will call it, unfortunately I will not be around to participate. :-(
I can tell you exactly how they look to the naked eye. Black. The whole point of telescopes is to see things which aren't visible with the naked eye!
I suspect that what Billy meant was what these would look like were we in visual proximity, without the need for a telescope. I was wondering about this too. While I find the pictures both beautiful and awe-inspiring, is this what they would look like were we close enough to see them with the naked eye? Is it possible to know what they would really look like?
In a lot of cases they are close enough (or rather: large enough) to see with the naked eye. The standard field of view in Hubble images is a bit more than a tenth of the diameter of the Moon, while mosaics can be several times larger, so these pictures are small, but not invisibly small.
The issue with very many objects in astronomy is that they're too dark, not that they're too small. If you get closer to them, they get bigger, but they don't get brighter.
The Andromeda Galaxy, for example, is several times larger than the full Moon. But unless you have good eyesight, an exceptionally dark night, and you know exactly where to look (in which case you'll see an incredibly dim blob, and you certainly won't see any structure) you won't see anything at all.
The thing with Hubble images (and images from other telescopes) is that they have very wide apertures to let in lots of light (2.4 metres for Hubble, 10 metres for the biggest on the ground, compared to a few millimetres for your eyes), sensitive cameras and make long exposures.
Oh, and short reply to HN-1558401 -
If you were closer to these objects, to the extent that they looked to the naked eye roughly the size that they look on your monitor, and assuming you were in complete darkness and your eyes adapted to the dark:
- NGC 1763: You would see the stars, quite brightly, and they would might appear slightly blueish white. The nebulosity would be very faint. In real life, the glowing gas is a shade of pink (with a hint of green), but a quirk of how human eyes are sensitive to different colours means your eyes would mostly notice the green (if they could see anything at all).
- Messier 77, NGC 4100, NGC 6300: These would look much like the Milky Way or even Andromeda do in the night sky, i.e. very dim; you would struggle to make out the spiral forms.
- XZ Tauri: the star would appear bright, the nebulosity around it very dim.
Majestic topic. Wonderfully diluted for common consumption. Fantastic piece of reporting!! Thank you.
Nice.
I'll second that of Warren S. Levine. Great story Alen and thank you for bringing this to us.
What is a real disappointment, I can't go see these things with my own eyes up close. There seems no end to the wonders of our universe.
What if we told you you could?
how close is close?
and how can your disappointment be real
you cant touch it
you cant see it
and
the reason there seems no end to the wonders
is that there is no end to the wonders
and
its supposed to be that way
It is an amazing thing for them to allow the public at large, no questions asked, to go though the photos and look for things they missed. I bet if you walked up to 100 Phd.s and said, hey I am an amature, would you mind if I look though your data to see if you missed anything, you would get 100, very respondent, NO's...mostly hell no's at that. In a way I wish I did not have so many projects going on already, this one is certainly worthy of anyone's try, from beginner to professional. And a special thanks to ALL who entered, it is amazing what you have done, perhaps some of these would of been forever lost in our growing mountain of data.
MAGNIFICENT and EXQUISITE!! However, Cheetah, in the first photo I saw a seahorse, not the Virgin Mary. It's all in the eye of the beholder.
Kinda puts things in perspective doesn't it.
Really cool. ;) Thanx for your science stories Alan. I know there aren't 54,000 comments (like there are for a Kardashian story) but I for one really appreciate these science/space articles you do. :)
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
...When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears...
(William Blake)
The thing that really bothers me is that so many people still think we are the center of it all. To me that is like a virus trying to say it is the greatest thing ever. To me we are the virus. I hope we don't infect out there.
Seems to me that what`s the point of creation without a sentient presence to appreciate it and tries to understand it? Indeed, we are a portion of the universe trying to understand itself.
Actually we are. Every point in space is "the center of it all" pause
awesome.... hard to believe all that is floating about in space..
agree with Billy, false spectra makes those picture pretty much useless. For public consumption even the pictures of our own planets are in false color and you can't even trust the spectrometer data on the web because you get 10 different readings of the same objetc due to doppler shifts. There are three possible explanations, they are either classified or scientists just don't know what they're doing, or both.
as stated earlier
its put in a spectra that you can - see
I said - ITS PUT IN A SPECTRA THAT YOU CAN - SEE
It's a dragon in the first shot
Why is it that so many things in the natural world appear (to us) beautiful. Such things might just as easily seem ugly, or even abhorrent.
It is easier to understand why things with pleasant fragrances (or tastes) are usually good for us or, at least, benign. But, how is it that we evolved to appreciate the beauty of things by which we are not even remotely affected?
I think it would be nice to see the before and after to show the changes.
I spotted 2 black holes in pic.9
was just thinking.i wish we all could go out there and cruise around in space.it might put things into perspective.the way life on earth is seems to be a good example of cabin fever.