Starship Asterisk*

Yay!!!

[url=http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/08/24/hubbles-hidden-treasures-winners/][size=120][b][i]Hubble’s Hidden Treasures: winners![/i][/b][/size][/url]
Discover Blogs | Bad Astronomy | 2012 Aug 24
[quote][float=right][img3=""]http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7248/6983041144_ff140cbe03_b.jpg[/img3][/float]Earlier this year, the folks at the European Space Agency’s Hubble HQ announced a contest called [url=http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/05/15/help-find-hubbles-hidden-treasures/][b]Hubble’s Hidden Treasures[/b][/url]: they wanted people to go through the massive archives of Hubble’s data and look for gorgeous objects that may have been previously overlooked.

This is a cool idea, and they got over 3000 submissions! They just announced the winners, and it’s a collection of jaw-dropping beauty. [url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/79510497@N07/7138602155/in/pool-1898430@N24/][b]Here’s the first place winner in the "Image Processing" category[/b][/url], a stunner of NGC 1763, part of a [url=http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/06/22/a-vast-cosmic-cloudy-brain-looms-in-a-nearby-galaxy/][b]massive star-forming complex[/b][/url] in a companion galaxy to our Milky Way:

Oooo, pretty. That was done by Josh Lake, who won the public vote as well as the judges’ with this work.

It was also nice to see BABlog regular [url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/77801968@N08/6916099570/in/pool-1898430@N24/][b]André vd Hoeven[/b][/url] place in the contest as well. [b]But I have to say, after looking over the winners, I would’ve leaned toward[/b] [url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/geckzilla/6983041144/in/pool-1898430@N24/][b]this shot[/b][/url], [b]by Judy Schmidt:[/b] :arrow:

Holy wow! You need to click that shot to see it in much higher resolution to really appreciate it. That’s XZ Tauri, a newly-born star a few hundred light years away. XZ Tau is the bright star just to the right of center. In the zoomed shot, you can see two lobes of material on either side of it; these were launched into space during [url=http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2000/32/][b]a massive explosive event[/b][/url] caught by Hubble back in 2000. The surrounding nebulosity is amazing, too, shaped by shock waves from other new stars which blast off material during paroxysms – young stars rotate rapidly, blow off huge winds, and have strong magnetic fields, which can lead to epic eruptions. They can also [url=http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/07/03/newborn-star-makes-a-cosmic-bank-shot/][b]blast out beams of material[/b][/url] which can travel for dozens of light years.

[url=http://www.spacetelescope.org/announcements/ann1211/][b]All the images from the contest are wonderful[/b][/url], and well worth your time to peruse. Funny, too: just yesterday [url=http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/08/23/two-amazing-curiosity-descent-videos/][b]I wrote[/b][/url] that digital images from space have revolutionized how we do astronomy, putting the data into the hands of people who can play with it and show us things we hadn’t seen before.

I love it when a plan comes together. [/quote]
[url=http://www.universetoday.com/97012/hubbles-hidden-treasures-unveiled/][size=120][b][i]Hubble’s Hidden Treasures Unveiled[/i][/b][/size][/url]
Universe Today | John Williams | 2012 Aug 24

Congrats to you to! I didn't directly make the link between geckzilla and Judy :)

Congrats, Andre!

Congratulations to [url=http://asterisk.apod.com/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=132644][b]avdhoeven[/b][/url] for 2nd and [url=http://asterisk.apod.com/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=124138][b]geckzilla[/b][/url] for 3rd!

[url=http://www.spacetelescope.org/announcements/ann1211/][size=120][b][i]Hubble’s Hidden Treasures Revealed[/i][/b][/size][/url]
ESA/HEIC Hubble | 2012 Aug 23
[quote]Hubble has made over a million observations since launch, but only a small proportion are attractive images — and an even smaller number are ever actually seen by anyone outside the small groups of scientists that publish them. But the vast amount of data in the archive means that there are still many hundreds of beautiful images scattered among the valuable, but visually unattractive, scientific data that have never been enjoyed by the public.

We call these pictures Hubble’s hidden treasures, and a few months ago, we invited the public to look through Hubble’s science archive to help us find them.

The response was impressive, with almost 3000 submissions. More than a thousand of these images were fully processed: a difficult and time-consuming task. We’ve already started featuring the best of these in our Hubble Picture of the Week series.

And to say thanks, we’re awarding prizes for the best images you found.

[float=right][img3="[url=http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/ann1211a/][b][i]Collage of Top Images in the Hidden Treasures Image Processing Competition[/i][/b][/url]"]http://www.spacetelescope.org/static/archives/images/screen/ann1211a.jpg[/img3][/float][size=120][b]Prize winners — image processing category[/b][/size]

There were 1189 entries in the image processing category, where contestants had to find promising data in the archive and process them into an attractive image. The top ten entries ranked by the jury are our prize winners; the top five of these were incredibly close and all impressed the judges in different ways.

Prizes:

[list] [*] First prize: Apple iPad, Laminated wall print, Autograph of astronaut John Grunsfeld (veteran of three Hubble repair missions), Hubble posters, Eyes on the Skies book and DVD
[*] Second prize: Aluminium mounted Hubble print, Eyes on the Skies book and DVD
[*] Third prize: Hubble poster, Eyes on the Skies book and DVD
[*] Fourth to tenth prizes: Eyes on the Skies DVD, Hubble poster

[*] People's choice (by public vote): Aluminium mounted Hubble print[/list]

[b]First prize and winner of the public vote:[/b]

[float=right][img]http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7276/7138602155_73bc85d385_t.jpg[/img][/float][url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/79510497@N07/7138602155/in/pool-1898430@N24/][b]Josh Lake, star-forming region NGC 1763[/b][/url]

Josh Lake (USA) 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 (heic1011), based on observations by the same team. Josh took a different approach, producing a bold two-colour image which contrasts the light from glowing hydrogen and nitrogen. The image is not in natural colours — 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.

[b]Second prize:[/b]

[float=right][img]http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7057/6916099570_e1d5e1c3bd_t.jpg[/img][/float][url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/77801968@N08/6916099570/in/pool-1898430@N24/][b]Andre van der Hoeven, spiral galaxy Messier 77[/b][/url]

Andre van der Hoeven (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. Andre entered several other noteworthy images into the competition, including a huge image of Messier 106, combining data from Hubble and other telescopes. His image of NGC 6537, a star-forming region, greatly impressed the jury too.

[b]Third prize:[/b]

[float=right][img]http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7248/6983041144_ff140cbe03_t.jpg[/img][/float][url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/geckzilla/6983041144/in/pool-1898430@N24/][b]Judy Schmidt, star XZ Tauri[/b][/url]

Judy Schmidt (USA) also 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 favourite. This was a challenging dataset to process, as Hubble only captured two colours in this area. Nevertheless, the end result is an attractive image, and an unusual object that we would never have found without her help. Judy’s other images also impressed our panel, in particular her images of Herbig–Haro object HH 909A and elliptical galaxy PGC 6240.

[b]Fourth prize:[/b]

[float=right][img]http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7084/7310537158_404ca2f487_t.jpg[/img][/float][url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/79753822@N07/7310537158/in/pool-1898430@N24/][b]Renaud Houdinet, nebula Chamaeleon I[/b][/url]

Renaud Houdinet (France) submitted a hugely ambitious mosaic of Hubble images. Chamaeleon I is a large nebula near the south celestial pole, and it does not fit into a single Hubble image. Renaud painstakingly tiled the exposures together. Despite the small gaps between the Hubble images, the jury was impressed by the technical achievement of putting together this ambitious vista.

[b]Fifth prize:[/b]

[float=right][img]http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7212/7167855728_382c913318_t.jpg[/img][/float][url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/78181314@N05/7167855728/in/pool-1898430@N24/][b]Robert Gendler, spiral galaxy Messier 96[/b][/url]

Robert Gendler (USA) is a well known figure in the amateur image processing world. His version of Hubble’s image of NGC 3190 is the default desktop image on new Apple computers. Robert submitted a number of excellent images into the competition. This image of Messier 96 was the jury’s favourite.

[b]Sixth prize: [url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/27527123@N02/7075802495/in/pool-1898430@N24/]Claude Cornen, SNR 0519-69[/url][/b]
[b]Seventh prize: [url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/9460765@N08/7265295260/in/pool-1898430@N24/]Josh Barrington, PK111-2.1[/url][/b]
[b]Eighth prize: [url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/76658917@N04/7030460493/in/pool-1962448@N22/]Flickr user kyokugaisha1, NGC 1501[/url][/b]
[b]Ninth prize: [url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/nickr2006/6935931856/in/pool-1898430@N24/]Nick Rose, Abell 68[/url][/b]
[b]Tenth prize: [url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/llacertae/4693211679/in/pool-1898430@N24/]Nikolaus Sulzenauer, dwarf galaxy IC 10[/url][/b]

[size=120][b]Prize winners — basic image searching category[/b][/size]

There were 1619 entries in our basic competition. This allowed the public to search and find amazing Hubble pictures even if they didn’t have the skills to fully process these themselves.

[b]Prizes:[/b]

[list] [*] First prize: Apple iPod Touch, Laminated wall print, Autograph of astronaut John Grunsfeld
(veteran of three Hubble repair missions), Hubble posters, Eyes on the Skies book and DVD
[*] Second prize: Aluminium mounted Hubble print, Eyes on the Skies book and DVD
[*] Third prize: Hubble poster, Eyes on the Skies book and DVD
[*] Fourth to tenth prizes: Eyes on the Skies DVD, Hubble poster

[*] People's choice (by public vote): Aluminium mounted Hubble print[/list]

[float=right][img3="[url=http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/ann1211b/][b][i]Collage of Top Images in the Hidden Treasures Basic Imaging Competition[/i][/b][/url]"]http://www.spacetelescope.org/static/archives/images/screen/ann1211b.jpg[/img3][/float][b]First prize: [url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/sinickel/7271841774/in/pool-1962448@N22/]Brian Campbell, NGC 6300[/url][/b]
[b]Second prize: [url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/ubica_padonkoff/7087361165/in/pool-1962448@N22/]Alexey Romashin, V* PV Cephei[/url][/b]
[b]Third prize: [url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/75228565@N07/7151983989/in/pool-1962448@N22/]Luca Limatola, IRAS 14568-6304[/url][/b]
[b]Fourth prize: [url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/77954350@N07/6997319628/in/pool-1962448@N22/]Kathlyn Smith, NGC 1579[/url][/b]
[b]Fifth prize: [url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/7551856@N04/7247283640/in/pool-1962448@N22/]Adam Kill, B 1608+656[/url][/b]
[b]Sixth equal prize: [url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/78361522@N07/7300953370/in/pool-1962448@N22/]Kathy van Pelt, NGC 4490[/url][/b]
[b]Sixth equal prize: [url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/ralf-schoofs/7035102977/in/pool-1962448@N22/]Ralf Schoofs, NGC 4217[/url][/b]
[b]Eighth prize: [url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/78672361@N06/7057279733/in/pool-1962448@N22/]Matej Novak, NGC 6153[/url][/b]
[b]Ninth prize: [url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/76908014@N05/6910445538/in/pool-1962448@N22/]Gavrila Alexandru, NGC 7814[/url][/b]
[b]Tenth prize: [url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/34102695@N00/6884761666/in/pool-1962448@N22/]Linda Morgan-O’Connor, NGC 7026[/url][/b]

The public vote was won by [url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/77105803@N08/7269273524/in/pool-1962448@N22/][b]Budeanu Cosmin Mirel for NGC 4100[/b][/url] [/quote]
[url=http://hubblesite.org/news/2012/40][size=120][b][i]Hubble's Photo Contest Selects Winners[/i][/b][/size][/url]
NASA | STScI | HubbleSite | 2012 Aug 23

Another great image, geckzilla!

I suppose almost all elliptical galaxies have some gas and dust near their centers. It was interesting to see the nuclear dust disk and the jets of this galaxy.

Ann

This is the last thing I submitted to the contest before it closed. I will surely keep doing them without the contest, though. There's still a lot of images in there that haven't been processed. For this, I used F814W and F658N because the small, S-shaped jets in the center. The dust came from a separate exposure that used F555W. I used much more aggressive processing to show the dust and the jets in greater detail. It's kind of interesting how the ellipse of the galaxy itself is perpendicular to the dust.

NGC 2768
[url=http://www.geckzilla.com/astro/NGC2768.jpg][img]http://www.geckzilla.com/astro/NGC2768_sm.jpg[/img][/url]

I think Kuiper belt objects would be too faint and small and too unlikely to be in the picture. Maybe stars from our own galaxy moving against the background galaxies? I really don't know, because other than the bottom of the image, it is all aligned pretty well except for those few things.

If the exposures were taken five years apart, I doubt those weird-looking things are Kuiper Belt objects. The strange appearance of them is almost certainly due to the exposures being misaligned, like you said.

Ann

I guess they could be moving objects but the channels could also be slightly misaligned. In fact, I know for sure that towards the bottom of the picture it's off by about 1-2 pixels. But everything is off, even the galaxies. F606W was taken in 2005 and the other two were done in 2011. 5 years and 8 months passed between them. They were taken with two different detectors so many years apart that I am completely amazed it's not more difficult to line them up. All I had to do was scale the two infrared ones 180% (I am impressed that it's always a flat number and not something like 183.8%) and they line up almost perfectly with the large ACS/WFC F606W shot. There's at least 5 things that I found rather quickly that seem to move more than misalignment might account for. I don't know how likely it would be for 5 of them to be easily found in one 2' wide image, though.

If you or anyone is really bored, here are the individual channels.
R http://www.geckzilla.com/astro/MACSJ0152.5-2852_F140W.png
G http://www.geckzilla.com/astro/MACSJ0152.5-2852_F110W.png
B http://www.geckzilla.com/astro/MACSJ0152.5-2852_F606W.png

Here is a link that explains their choice of filters for MCG-03-04-014:
http://archive.stsci.edu/proposal_search.php?mission=hst&id=10592

You don't think those weird multicolored object might be moving objects? Maybe faint, distant Kuiper Belt objects?

I couldn't believe the filters used for the MCG-03-04-014 image. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the far infrared 814W filter is such a boring old mainstay that I find myself beginning to yawn. But F245W? 245W? Isn't that a far ultraviolet filter, or at the very least a pretty far out near ultraviolet filter? Ultraviolet filters are so rarely used by people taking Hubble images. Why would they use it here? Is it because they suspected that the small satellite galaxy is full of ultraviolet stars? (Or rather, since this faint little thing is not "full" of stars, did they suspect that this faint little galaxy gets most of its light from hot ultraviolet stars?)

Ann

MCG-03-04-014 is, of course, the bright one on the left. Not sure what's up with the faint one on the right.

MCG-03-04-014
F814W, F245W
[url=http://www.geckzilla.com/astro/MCG-03-04-014.jpg][img]http://www.geckzilla.com/astro/MCG-03-04-014_sm.jpg[/img][/url]

I've been frustrating myself lately trying to better understand all this stuff, mainly just getting a headache. I don't know what to say about this. It's a galaxy cluster in two near infrared filters and a red one.

MACS J0152.5 -2852
F140W, F110W, F606W
[url=http://www.geckzilla.com/astro/MACSJ0152.5-2852.jpg][img]http://www.geckzilla.com/astro/MACSJ0152.5-2852_sm.jpg[/img][/url]

[s]I might just be delirious at this point but there is this weird yellow dot in the lower middle of the upper right quadrant... when you zoom in it's kind of unique looking. Maybe it's nothing... or maybe it's some strange, distant or tiny object. I am sure that its characteristics are carried across all three filters, though, so I know it's not just an imaging artifact.[/s] Actually, there's another one on the far left middle, so maybe it is an artifact. That's it, I need sleep. :derp:
[img]http://www.geckzilla.com/astro/MACSJ0152.5-2852_odd.jpg[/img]

I think the various shapes of the galaxy are more easily explained by past and ongoing interactions with another nearby galaxy. It's off to the right and not in the picture. I should have mentioned that.

What a fantastic picture, geckzilla! :D

The galaxy itself it truly fascinating. Its center is, as you say, extremely bright. I've been too lazy to try to find out if the galaxy has an active nucleus, but clearly the nucleus must have been active in the past, if it isn't active now. Your image shows what appears to be a dust disk spiralling in towards the nucleus, which might produce a bright accretion disk around the black hole that is undoubtedly there at the center. Personally I believe that there is a very high concentration of stars in the center too, which would have been produced by past star formation. If you check out http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=28507, you'll come to an article which quotes an astronomer saying that black hole growth and star formation increase together up to a point. I believe that past star formation has produced a huge concentration near of stars near the nucleus.

I think you can see signs of past jets in the strange morphology of the galaxy. Check out the "shard" or "arc" that has been "torn loose" on the left side of the galaxy. The color of this arc appears to be very slightly bluer than the rest of the galaxy, which I take to mean that it is slightly younger than most of the galaxy. If there was a jet from the center long ago, which rammed into a great concentration of gas and dust here, then that might have caused a lot of star formation. Note that there appears to be a concentration of globular clusters where such a jet might have rammed into a "wall of gas and dust" and caused a lot of star formation. Admittedly the globular clusters ought to "spread out" as they orbit the galaxy, but I can't help noticing the weird location of them.

There is also a ring of dust some distance away from the nucleus. There might possibly be some very low-level star formation in this ring, because it looks like we may be seeing, possibly, some clusters in the ring.

Finally, the number and variety of background galaxies is astonishing! What a picture! Thank you, geckzilla!

Ann

Even though I've expressed some frustration with elliptical galaxies in the past, they are really starting to grow on me. They are subtle and seem more mysterious to me than eye-catching, dusty spirals. I'm not only attracted to the soft forms of this galaxy but there are so many galaxies filling the background it's not something you want to crop the edges away from. Also of interest is that the core of the galaxy is bright enough to generate faint diffraction spikes.

PGC6240
F814W, F475W
[url=http://www.geckzilla.com/astro/PGC6240.jpg][img]http://www.geckzilla.com/astro/PGC6240_sm.jpg[/img][/url]

Here we go, my first real video submission. :mrgreen:

...Aaaaand it doesn't matter how hard I search BEFORE doing a bunch of work on something like this, sometimes I just can't find out that it's already been done until AFTER I've done it... in this case I found it in the related videos after my video. Damn! I even searched YouTube and couldn't find it... and now suddenly it appears. :bang: http://www.spacetelescope.org/videos/heic1003b/

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVDIC19E6uQ[/youtube]


Maybe it's better with color?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rd_nF_LVU6A[/youtube]

A nice dark nebula in the constellation of Taurus, IRAS 5437

Datasets:
HST_10536_71_ACS_WFC_F606W
HST_10536_71_ACS_WFC_F814W

[img]http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5333/7005887234_c2d7e0f822_z_d.jpg[/img]

And Mars as seen from Hubble in 2003:

[img]http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7265/7152232757_153786457e_z_d.jpg[/img]

Hi Ann,

here is the larger one:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/avdhoeven/7003662318/sizes/o/in/pool-1898430@N24/

Messing around with something completely different... Tomorrow (if I have time) I'll throw together a better one. This one has a couple of time gaps in it and was taken over the course of two days. The one I'm eying for tomorrow shouldn't have any time gaps in it but I only gave the list of images a cursory look-over.

[b]Some things to note[/b]: This is totally artificial color... I've made what I assume to be aurora a cyan-ish color to make them easier to see. The odd line going across is just one of those irksome data gaps. It's all a little sloppy and a test to see how much effort it takes. All frames were either in [url=http://www.stsci.edu/hst/acs/documents/handbooks/cycle20/c10_ImagingReference38.html]F115LP[/url] or [url=http://www.stsci.edu/hst/acs/documents/handbooks/cycle20/c10_ImagingReference40.html]F125LP[/url] using the [url=http://www.stsci.edu/hst/acs/documents/handbooks/cycle20/c04_detector5.html]SBC MAMA[/url] and you get a gold star if you can figure out what SBC MAMA stands for.

[color=#8000FF][b]Click me, I animate:[/b][/color]
[url=http://www.geckzilla.com/astro/saturn_animation.gif][img]http://www.geckzilla.com/astro/saturn_animation.jpg[/img][/url]

Ah, NGC 3256! I believe that the activity of this galaxy is the result of a merger. It is a very ultraviolet galaxy with a lot of central star formation, while the outer parts are pretty "dead".

Hey, you don't happen to have a larger picture of it, Andre?

Ann

Another nice galaxy with a lot of h-alpha activity near the center NGC 3256:

[img]http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7210/7003662318_3266166cd1_z_d.jpg[/img]

Datasets used:
HST_9735_21_ACS_WFC_F555W (green)
HST_9735_22_ACS_WFC_FR656N (red)
HST_10592_34_ACS_WFC_F435W (blue + lum)
HST_10592_34_ACS_WFC_F814W (red + lum)

NGC 2023 "Sunset Glow" The official processors already [url=http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1130a/]did this[/url] but it's such a striking image that I wanted to try it myself. I noticed there was some infrared data for part of the area the flare covers so I used that luminance data to see through the flare and reduce it quite a bit, recovering some of the reflection nebula texture below. It was actually a lot easier than it sounds. I had to crop it to a landscape because the flare extended well past the infrared data and it looked awkward otherwise.

[url=http://www.geckzilla.com/astro/NGC2023.jpg][img]http://www.geckzilla.com/astro/NGC2023_sm.jpg[/img][/url]

Oh, NGC 3432! That's a very blue galaxy. For a very blue galaxy it is moderately large, half the brighness of the Milky Way. Unfortunately my software won't say anything about the far infrared magnitude of NGC 3432, which makes it hard to judge how much fresh star formation is just getting started in it. Judging from you picture, however, there are definitely dark dust lanes in it. Nevertheless, in view of the fact that we see this galaxy edge on, there isn't that much dust.

The F658N channel traces emission nebulae, so all those orangish clouds we see mark the presence of hot young stars. As for what the F625W filter is supposed to detect, however, I don't know. I think that was a moderately poor choice, filter-wise.

But it's a great picture! :D

Ann