Pictures: Best Amateur Astronomy Images Announced

Diamond in the Rough
Image courtesy Igor Chekalin via ESO
The Orion Nebula comes alive with color in 1 of 20 recently announced winning shots in the European Southern Observatory's Hidden Treasures 2010 astrophotography contest.
The competition called for the public to troll through terabytes of raw image data collected by ESO's professional observatories and process it into something artistic and scientifically valuable.
Ten people submitted the 20 highest ranked shots, which were chosen based on "the quality of the data processing, the originality of the image, and the overall aesthetic feel," according to an ESO statement.
The Orion Nebula, a huge cloud of gas and dust that's actively forming stars, is one of the most studied and photographed celestial objects. Russian amateur astronomer Igor Chekalin decided to process this image to emphasize the relatively cool dust, which reflects starlight, rather than the hot hydrogen gas, which emits its own light. (See a high-resolution Hubble picture of Orion.)
Chekalin first identified a series of grayscale images archived from ESO's 2.2-meter telescope in La Silla, Chile. Then he painstakingly stitched together and digitally processed the images to pull out structural details in the nebula.
"Normally our team of professional image processors searches this archive and identifies data sets that could be interesting for the public," said ESO public outreach officer Oana Sandu. "This time, however, we decided to give astronomy and photography enthusiasts the opportunity to try their skills and show the world what they can do."
(Also see the best astronomy pictures of 2010, as chosen by the Royal Observatory, Greenwich.)
—Andrew Fazekas
Published January 20, 2011
Neon Crown
Image courtesy Sergey Stepanenko via ESO
A kaleidoscope of neon swirls decorates the nebula known as NGC 6729 in another winning picture from the ESO contest, processed by Ukrainian armchair astronomer Sergey Stepanenko. The raw data came from a now decommissioned spectrograph used by the Very Large Telescope in Chile.
Hidden deep in the constellation Corona Australis ("southern crown"), this star incubator glows because its gases are being charged by powerful radiation from the newborn stars inside. Even though NGC 6729 lies just 424 light-years from Earth—making it one of the nearest star-forming regions in the Milky Way galaxy—the nebula remains one of the least studied.
Astronomers can bring out certain structural details in a nebula by using a set of special narrow-band filters on telescope cameras. But in a given image, the filters highlight some structures while masking others—which can pose problems when trying to reassemble a true likeness of the ghostly celestial object.
"The NGC 6729 nebula is based on a very original data set, containing only narrow-band filter images, which are challenging to work with," ESO's Sandu said. "While the data processing was simpler than for the Orion image, assembling data obtained only through these filters is not simple. But Sergey did a great job."
Published January 20, 2011
Cratered Crescent
Image courtesy Andy Strappazzon via ESO
Although ESO collected almost a hundred entries during the Hidden Treasures contest, this winning picture of a crescent moon was the only submission featuring a solar system body.
The bane of most professional astronomers, the moon is often avoided because its bright glare blocks out views of more distant—and thus fainter—objects.
Andy Strappazzon from Belgium used raw data from a wide-field imager attached to the 2.2-meter telescope in Chile to assemble the complex and detailed mosaic of the cratered surface of Earth's only natural satellite. (See the first high-resolution pictures of the moon from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.)
"We appreciated he looked for images of the moon, which are uncommon in our archive and which are very often overlooked," ESO's Sandu said.
Published January 20, 2011
Loops of Light
Image courtesy Joseph DePasquale via ESO
A mushrooming cloud of hydrogen gas—lighted up by dozens of young stars huddled near the cloud's center—spreads into interstellar space in this prize-winning picture of the nebula NGC 3582. The raw data came from the 2.2-meter La Silla telescope.
Like the contest's other cosmic artisans, Joe DePasquale of the United States had his work cut out dealing with optical distortions and digital blemishes scattered throughout the original data sets. Many raw images taken by even the largest telescopes contain such artifacts, which are caused by the instruments and so don't reflect the true natures of the featured objects.
Certain photo-processing techniques are required to correct the raw data, including using some reference and calibration images acquired before or after the desired image is snapped.
"These steps are delicate, as applying the wrong correction will result in an image that will have a very uneven background, stripes, lines, and other incorrect—and ugly—results," Sandu said.
Published January 20, 2011
Goblin Grin
Image courtesy Manuel Mejias via ESO
Looking like a ghoulish Halloween mask in this winning photo, the so-called N44 superbubble shines in vibrant color thanks to Manuel Mejas from Argentina, who processed raw data from the Very Large Telescope to create the scene.
The superbubble is a nebula complex 160,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. The bubble itself measures about 325 light-years across. Astronomers suspect the bubble was carved by fast stellar winds blown by a central cluster of stars. Additional star formation is thought to be triggered by the expanding gas shells of superbubbles such as this one.
Published January 20, 2011
Star Nest
Image courtesy Josh Barrington via ESO
Josh Barrington of the United States managed to render a hauntingly beautiful, prize-winning view of a distant cousin of the Orion Nebula, the star-forming nebula NGC 2467. Like a cosmic nest of stellar chicks, this cloud of dust and gas hides a cluster of newborn stars from direct view.
Barrington found the raw data—of an object 13,000 light-years from Earth—among images captured by a wide-field camera attached to the 2.2-meter La Silla telescope.
"The participants certainly exceed all our expectations," Sandu said. "This was not a competition for the faint-hearted, and entrants had to prove both knowledge of data processing and an artistic eye. We were pleasantly surprised to see so many talented people and, what's more, to discover that many of them learned to achieve such great results along the way."
Published January 20, 2011