1. bioephemera
  2. Hidden treasures of astrophotography

Hidden treasures of astrophotography

By bioephemera on January 23, 2011.

NGC 3621

Joe DePasquale was a winner of the European Southern Observatory's hidden treasures 2010 competition with this lovely photo. From ESO:

"The pictures of the Universe that can be seen in ESO's releases are impressive. However, many hours of skilful work are required to assemble the raw greyscale data captured by the telescopes into these colourful images, correcting them for distortions and unwanted signatures of the instrument, and enhancing them so as to bring out the details contained in the astronomical data. ESO has a team of professional image processors, but for the ESO's Hidden Treasures 2010 competition, the experts decided to give astronomy and photography enthusiasts the opportunity to show the world what they could do with the mammoth amount of data contained in ESO's archives."

See more entries on flickr. Via NotCot.

Update: see Wired's coverage here.

Tags
Photography

More like this

The Hubble Treasure Hunt
Many of the Hubble Space Telescope images have never been looked at. You can now browse the archives and win valuable prizes for finding cool new pics. This is a cool, fun thing, and it is easy enough for a theorist to do. Hubble Hidden Treasures - How To With an iThing and the Dynamic Kids, we…
Sometimes, Size is Everything!
"I went into a clothing store, and the lady asked me what size I was. I said, 'Actual'. I'm not to scale." -Demitri Martin When you look out at the Universe, what you can see is limited, at the most fundamental level, by the size of what you look with. This is why you can see dimmer objects at…
So, you want to get involved in Astronomy?
"An educational system isn't worth a great deal if it teaches young people how to make a living but doesn't teach them how to make a life." -Unknown Every now and again, people with all sorts of backgrounds -- from some graduate school all the way to having not finished high school -- ask me about…
On Seeing Further
"All things move and nothing remains still" -- Heraclitus The history of astronomy can be read as a story of better and better vision. Over the centuries, we have supplemented our vision with technology that allows us to see further and more clearly; while Ancient astronomers, who relied only on…