NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has made over one million observations during its more than two decades in orbit. New images are published nearly every week, but hidden in Hubble's huge data archives are some truly breathtaking images that have never been seen. They're called Hubble's Hidden Treasures, and you can now help to bring them to light.
Between now and May 31, 2012, the European Space Agency (ESA), NASA's partner in the Hubble mission, invites you to explore Hubble's vast science archive to dig out the best unseen Hubble images. Find a great dataset in the Hubble Legacy Archive (HLA), adjust the contrast and colors using the simple online tools, and submit to the Hubble's Hidden Treasures Contest Flickr group.
Over two decades in orbit, the Hubble Space Telescope has made a huge number of observations. Every week, we publish new ones on the Hubble website. But hidden in Hubble’s huge data archives are some truly breathtaking images that have hardly ever been seen by anyone.
In this episode, Dr J, aka Dr Joe Liske, explains what all this data is, what it’s for, and how you can take a look at it yourself.
If you’re want to try your hand at looking through the archive for hidden treasures, why not enter our Hidden Treasures competition (competition closes 31 May 2012). Find a great dataset and you could win an iPod Touch, try your hand at processing the image and you could win an iPad.
This Hubblecast is the first with specially composed music by Toomas Erm, head of the control engineering department at the European Southern Observatory.
Re: Hubble's Hidden Treasures Contest 2012
Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2012 12:38 pm
by geckzilla
I entered "cat" and a couple of confused hours later I ended up with this. The colors mean absolutely nothing, as far as I know. Hey, at least I participated.........
edit 4/1/2012: I revisited this image with better technique.
Nice, geckzilla! As you have noticed yourself, I'm sure, , your picture shows a very fine gravitational lense. Like you, I'm not too sure what the colors mean. Assuming that it's an SDSS image, however, we might hazard a guess that the lovely blue multiple arcs were detected by a green filter, and that the elliptical galaxies in the middle were detected by red and infrared filters.
Ann
Re: Hubble's Hidden Treasures Contest 2012
Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2012 4:19 pm
by bystander
It's a Hubble image.
Re: Hubble's Hidden Treasures Contest 2012
Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2012 10:20 pm
by geckzilla
Yeah, and the colors are something that happened when I took two of the images and placed them in the R and B channels in Photoshop. I couldn't find a third that wasn't full of bright white artifacts so I just put a duplicate of R into G. The blue and yellow are something that happened after I tinkered with the levels of each channel a bit to try to reduce the noise and increase the details. All of the images that I viewed in the archive were without exception very painful to look at. I'm even more amazed anything photogenic comes out of Hubble! I might try another if I can figure out what all of the labels on the individual exposures mean.
Re: Hubble's Hidden Treasures Contest 2012
Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2012 3:57 am
by Ann
bystander wrote:It's a Hubble image.
Obviously. I should have written to geckzilla, "your processing of a Hubble image".
I like geckzilla's processing of this particular Hubble image, I must say.
Ann
Re: Hubble's Hidden Treasures Contest 2012
Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2012 4:11 am
by bystander
Ann wrote:Assuming that it's an SDSS image,
I was just pointing out that it is not an SDSS image.
Re: Hubble's Hidden Treasures Contest 2012
Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2012 5:39 am
by Ann
Well, the address to geckzilla's image was http://www.geckzilla.com/apod/SDSSJ1038+4849.jpg. I couldn't help noticing the SDSS part of the address. I know that Hubble sometimes images something that has first been noticed by SDSS, so I thought that just maybe this was a case where Hubble, "in honour of SDSS", photographed this gravitational lens through filters that resemble those of SDSS. But I guess that was a silly thought. I did think, however, that the colors of geckzilla's image were slightly similar to the typical SDSS color images. Note that I said that geckzilla's colors were slightly similar to those that are typical of SDSS, not strikingly similar to them.
Ann
Re: Hubble's Hidden Treasures Contest 2012
Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2012 6:41 am
by bystander
SDSS J1038 + 4849 is the object's name. SDSS is credited with the discovery. J1038 + 4849 are the coordinates to the object.
Re: Hubble's Hidden Treasures Contest 2012
Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2012 2:45 pm
by geckzilla
I am way undereducated on this matter. I'm finding it very difficult to understand what the filter or spectral element name means. I mean, I know it means that it only captures a particular wavelength, but I am having a hard time understanding the specifics. APOD explanations make it seem so much more simple.
Re: Hubble's Hidden Treasures Contest 2012
Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2012 2:48 pm
by owlice
geckzilla, I'm impressed as heck that you tried this and shared your results!
Re: Hubble's Hidden Treasures Contest 2012
Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2012 2:52 pm
by Ann
owlice wrote:geckzilla, I'm impressed as heck that you tried this and shared your results!
Well, as someone who knows nothing about processing raw images and turning them into great pictures... let me say, nevertheless, that I find your picture very beautiful and very interesting, geckzilla. Indeed, thank you so much for doing this!
Ann
Re: Hubble's Hidden Treasures Contest 2012
Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2012 5:56 pm
by bystander
geckzilla wrote:I am way undereducated on this matter. I'm finding it very difficult to understand what the filter or spectral element name means. I mean, I know it means that it only captures a particular wavelength, but I am having a hard time understanding the specifics. APOD explanations make it seem so much more simple.
WFPC2 Filter Wavelengths
For the Hubble Deep Field (HDF), the HST WCF2 used F814W (R), F606W (G), and F450W (B). The number is their approximate central wavelength in nanometers.
Re: Hubble's Hidden Treasures Contest 2012
Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2012 6:51 pm
by geckzilla
Thanks, Bystander. I did finally get it worked out on my own. I was getting hung up on angstroms, nanometers, etc (And actually realizing that an A with a circle on the apex is an angstrom, haha...)
Managed to find a spectrum that uses angstroms and threw this together:
Kind of fun! Not yet sure how to reduce the noise in what should be mostly black space.
Re: Hubble's Hidden Treasures Contest 2012
Posted: Sat Mar 31, 2012 4:29 am
by geckzilla
Little brown planetary nebulas are boring, I guess. But I learned from it. Tried a galaxy.
NGC5907
Re: Hubble's Hidden Treasures Contest 2012
Posted: Sat Mar 31, 2012 4:57 am
by Beyond
Not very scientific, but it reminds me of a piece of bread coming out of a toaster. Light on one side and dark on the other.
Toast aside geckzilla, i don't really know what you're doing, but it looks good.
A pretty barred spiral somewhere near the edge of Serpens. If it has a name, I don't know how to find it. 15:16:14.980 +07:09:48.30
Re: Hubble's Hidden Treasures Contest 2012
Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2012 1:10 am
by owlice
I really like these!
Re: Hubble's Hidden Treasures Contest 2012
Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2012 5:22 am
by Ann
Geckzilla, the name of your galaxy in Serpens - the only name I have been able to find - is PGC 54493. (PGC means Principal Galaxy Catalog.)
Lovely image!
Ann
Re: Hubble's Hidden Treasures Contest 2012
Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2012 5:19 pm
by geckzilla
Too much free time, I have. NGC5793. Here there be water maser(s?).
Re: Hubble's Hidden Treasures Contest 2012
Posted: Mon Apr 02, 2012 2:25 pm
by avdhoeven
Browsing through the hubble legacy archive I found this beautiful area that was imaged in 2006. I didn't find any nice hubble palette image of this area, only an image showing the area in bicolor, with less detail. So I decided to make it myself
NGC 6357 Nebula HST imagery http://www.astro-photo.nl
Copyright: Hubble Legacy Archive/NASA/ESA processing by: André van der Hoeven
Messing around with this thing called the Egg Nebula just to satisfy my own curiosity. The first image, from what I've gathered, is using polarized light. Sooo, I think that means that the different colors means the light is traveling in different directions, not that it is actually colored that way. And the hover image is just plain light, which is closer to how it is actually colored. I wasn't going to post either of them because it's not all that great aesthetically but when I noticed that the two images were 11.3 years apart I got the idea to overlay them to create a 2 frame animation. I would guess that both the concentric rings and the rest of it are both expanding outward but I tried to line up the rings to make the relative movement between the two more apparent.
, your picture shows a very fine gravitational lense. Like you, I'm not too sure what the colors mean. Assuming that it's an SDSS image, however, we might hazard a guess that the lovely blue multiple arcs were detected by a green filter, and that the elliptical galaxies in the middle were detected by red and infrared filters.
