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ESO's Hidden Treasures Competition Astronomical News References Figure 2. The partici- pants at the workshop Masciadri, E. 2008, The Messenger, 134, 53 on site testing atmos- pheric data in Valparaiso, Chile arrayed by the har- Links bour. 1 Workshop web page: http://site2010.sai.msu.ru/ 2 Workshop web page: http://www.dfa.uv.cl/sitetestingdata/ 3 IAU Site Testing Instruments Working Group: http://www.ctio.noao.edu/science/iauSite/ 4 Sharing of site testing data: http://project.tmt.org/~aotarola/ST ESO’s Hidden Treasures Competition Olivier Hainaut1 Over the past two and a half years ESO The ESO Science Archive stores all the Oana Sandu1 has boosted its production of outreach data acquired on Paranal, and most of Lars Lindberg Christensen1 images, both in terms of quantity and the data obtained on La Silla since the quality, so as to become one of the best late 1990s. This archive constitutes a sources of astronomical images. In goldmine commonly used for science 1 ESO achieving this goal, the whole work flow projects (e.g., Haines et al., 2006), and for from the initial production process, technical studies (e.g., Patat et al., 2011). through to publication and promotion has But besides their scientific value, the ESO’s Hidden Treasures astropho- been optimised and strengthened. The imaging datasets in the archive also have tography competition gave amateur final outputs have been made easier to great outreach potential. astronomers the opportunity to search re-use in other products or channels by ESO’s Science Archive for a well- our partners. ESO has a small team of professional hidden cosmic gem. The competition image processors, but for ESO’s Hidden attracted nearly one hundred entries While the pictures of the Universe that Treasures competition, the experts de­­ and the winners were announced in can be seen in ESO’s releases are cided to give astronomy and photography January 2011. Astronomy enthusiast im pressive, many hours of skilful work are enthusiasts the opportunity to show the Igor Chekalin from Russia won the first required to first find datasets that can world what they could do with the data prize — a trip to the Very Large Tele- become useful “public” representations contained in the archive. A simplified scope at Paranal — in this difficult but of the Universe, and then to process interface to the ESO Science Archive was rewarding challenge. these into colour images. Along the way prepared by the Archive Group for this significant work goes into the astro­­ purpose and the goal of the competition Pictures can be powerful; and astro- nomical processing — to assemble the seemed at first glance simple: to produce nomical images even more so: these raw greyscale data captured by the a good outreach image with a dataset views of distant cosmic worlds can telescopes, to correct for the instrument from the ESO Science Archive that had inspire and help to connect us with the signature, and to process the graphics — not yet been published. Universe. The images could almost and in compressing the image’s dynamic be works of art when particularly intrigu- range to fit within the limited gamut of The enthusiasts who responded to the ing shapes and phenomena are cap- today’s monitors and printers, enhancing call submitted nearly 100 entries in total — tured and presented in an appropriate them so as to bring out the details con- far exceeding initial expectations, given way. Astronomical pictures are also an tained in the astronomical data1. the difficult nature of the challenge. Navi- efficient way to pique people’s interest in gating the Science Archive has a steep astronomy and science. learning curve for a new user due to the The Messenger 143 – March 2011 57 Astronomical News Hainaut O. et al., ESO’s Hidden Treasures Competition inherent complexity of the data. In addi- – Third prize, VLT laser cube model and tion, over the past few years we have other ESO outreach products: Andy systematically scoured the archives for Chekalin I. Strappazzon (Belgium). valuable datasets that would allow us – Fourth to tenth prizes, Eyes on the to release inspiring images of the Uni- Skies book and DVD, and other ESO verse and thereby already found most of outreach products: Joseph (Joe) the available appropriate datasets. This DePasquale (USA); Manuel (Manu) competition was not a challenge for the Mejias (Argentina); Alberto Milani (Italy); faint-hearted, requiring both an advanced Joshua (Josh) Barrington (USA); Oleg knowledge of data processing and an Maliy (Ukraine); Adam Kiil (United King- artistic eye. Digging through many tera- dom); Javier Fuentes (Chile). bytes of astronomical data, the entrants had to identify a series of frames that The overall winner, Igor Chekalin (seen in would reveal the hidden beauty of a ce­­ Figure 1) from Russia, who won the trip lestial object. to Paranal says, “It was a great expe- rience and pleasure to work with such The chance of a great reward for the tal- amazing data. As an amateur astro- ented winner was enough to spur on photographer, this was the most difficult the competitors: the first prize being a trip processing and post-processing job I to the Very Large Telescope, with guided have ever done. My participation in the tours and the opportunity to participate Figure 1. Astronomy enthusiast Igor Chekalin from Hidden Treasures competition gave in a night’s observations. Runners-up Russia, who participated in ESO’s Hidden Treasures me a range of challenges, from installing 2010 astrophotography competition and won the prizes included an iPod, books and DVDs. first prize: a trip to the VLT. new software to studying techniques Furthermore, the highest ranked images and even operating systems that I did not were to be released for the world to see know before.” on www.eso.org as Photo Releases or same people, the jury decided to make Pictures of the Week, co-crediting the awards to the ten most talented par- Some of the images submitted by the winners and promoted on ESO’s Face- ticipants, so as to give more people the ten winners are shown. The image of the book page, Twitter feed, uploaded on opportunity to win a prize and to reward reflection nebula Messier 78 selected by Wikipedia and on ESO’s Flickr account2. their hard work and talent. Igor Chekalin is shown in the Astronomi- cal News section, page (p. 46); he also The jury, composed of outreach and The prize winners were: produced the image of the pair of galax- image processing experts and astrono- – First prize, a trip to Paranal and other ies NGC 3169 and NGC 3166 shown mers, evaluated the entries based on the ESO outreach products: Igor Chekalin in Figure 2. Figure 3 shows a colour image quality of the data processing, the origi- (Russia). of the low-mass star-forming region nality of the image and the overall aes- – Second prize, an iPod Touch and other NGC 6729 by Sergey Stepanenko. The thetic feel. As several of the highest ESO outreach products: Sergey winning images can be viewed from ranked images were submitted by the Stepanenko (Ukraine). the web page announcing the winners3. Figure 2. (Left) The col- our image of the pair of galaxies NGC 3169 and NGC 3166, a field ESO/I. Chekalin ESO/I. also containing the recent supernova SN Stepanenko ESO/S. 2003cg, obtained with the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope and processed by Igor Chekalin. Figure 3. (Right) The low-mass star-forming region NGC 6729 is shown in a VLT FORS1 colour composite of Hα and S II exposures, pro- cessed by the second- prize winner Sergey Stepanenko. 58 The Messenger 143 – March 2011 Astronomical News Reflecting on the usefulness of the Hid- of the datasets had already been identi- Links den Treasures competition, we can fied by our team prior to the competition, 1 This work is carried out using the purpose-built say that it undoubtedly has served to fur- and were at some stage of processing, software developed in-house called the ESO/ESA/ ther increase the visibility of ESO and showing that the ESO Science Archive NASA FITS Liberator, available at: http://www. its data. Almost thirty of the submitted has few hidden gems remaining. spacetelescope.org/projects/fits_liberator/. 2 images have some potential to be re­­ To follow ESO’s social media accounts access: http://www.facebook.com/ESOAstronomy or leased publicly, and half a dozen were so http://twitter.com/ESO_Observatory impressive that they will become ESO References 3 The web page of the competition is at: http://www. Photo Releases over the next few months. eso.org/public/outreach/hiddentreasures Haines, C. P. et al. 2006, MNRAS, 371, 55 It is also interesting that four of the best Patat, F. et al. 2010, A&A, in press, arXiv:1011.6156 Fellows at ESO Andrea Ahumada has also given me the opportunity to do outreach. I feel that I am lucky to do what I have always been fascinated by astron- I do for living, so outreach is very impor- omy. As a young girl, when I watched the tant to me, because in this way I can give first episode of Cosmos (by Carl Sagan), something back to people. I had a dream: to become an astronomer. Now, after almost 30 years, I am writ- In two months I will move to Bologna ing these lines as an ESO fellow. This Observatory (Italy) for my fourth year as achievement was possible because my an ESO fellow. This is a wonderful parents and my oldest sister were piv- scientific opportunity for me because I otal in my career: they believed in me and have started working on the BOCCE supported my dreams.
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