14 DAY TRIAL // Officials at the European Space Observatory (ESO) announce the end of the Hidden Treasures 2010 competition, that pitted the world's best astrophotographers against each other. A list of the ten winners has already been posted on the organization's website.
More than 100 photographers have submitted their creations for the new contest, and ESO experts had the pleasure of going through all of the images in order to select the winner.
All those interested in participating had access to the organization's tremendously-large database, which contained a vast number of cosmic objects that the photographers could choose to image further.
The purpose was to discover a well-hidden cosmic gem, and to bring it into the public spotlight with a wonderful image. Russian astronomer enthusiast Igor Chekalin won the first prize.
His image granted him the privilege of visiting the Very Large Telescope array, that ESO operates at Cerro Paranal, in Chile. The observatory is among the most prolific in the world in terms of discoveries, benefiting from the clear skies of the Atacama Desert.
Usually, when a telescope sees a cosmic object, it captures its raw data in greyscale images. These then have to be converted to color, corrected for distortions and interferences, and have their contrast and brightness enhanced to bring out the true value of the data they contain.
ESO has a large number of experts whose job is to do all of this, but officials also wanted to give amateur photographers and astronomers the chance to do this as well. At the same time, the participants demonstrated their ability to handle vast amount of data, and synthesize them into beautiful images.
“The enthusiasts who responded to the call submitted nearly 100 entries in total – far exceeding initial expectations, given the difficult nature of the challenge,” ESO says in a press release.
“We were completely taken aback both by the quantity and the quality of the images that were submitted. This was not a challenge for the faint-hearted, requiring both an advanced knowledge of data processing and an artistic eye,” explains Lars Lindberg Christensen.
“We are thrilled to have discovered so many talented people,” adds the official, who is the head of the ESO Education and Public Outreach Department.
He explains that all those who entered the competition had to browse through many terabytes of data, and find sequences of greyscale images that could be further processed to reveal the intrinsic beauty of our Universe.
“The jury evaluated the entries based on the quality of the data processing, the originality of the image and the overall aesthetic feel,” ESO adds in the same statement.
The top three images selected by ESO as the winners of Hidden Treasures 2010 are: