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The observations from ESO’s telescopes are stored in a huge archive,

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a vast and complex vault of online information

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usually only visited by professional astronomers on a mission.

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And yet, an amateur astronomer from Russia

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managed to uncover a veritable gem in the flood of data,

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thereby winning a trip to Chile to observe with the Very Large Telescope.

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How did he manage it? And could you do the same?

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This is the ESOcast!

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Cutting-edge science and life behind the scenes of ESO,

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the European Southern Observatory.

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Exploring the ultimate frontier with our host Dr J, a.k.a. Dr Joe Liske.

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Hello and welcome to the ESOcast.

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In this episode we’re going to take a deep plunge into the vast archives of ESO,

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and we’re going to show you how a group of very dedicated and talented

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amateur astronomers managed to unearth some hidden treasures.

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As the world’s most productive ground–based astronomical observatory,

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ESO has many terabytes of data coming from its La Silla and Paranal Observatories

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that need to be safely stored.

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In addition to using these data for scientific research,

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ESO often delves into its archive to find raw data

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that can be polished into breathtaking astronomical images

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that can be shared with the public.

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However, turning the raw data into the images that you see is an intricate process

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that requires technical processing skills, as well as an artistic eye.

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The archive is publicly available, so anyone can go in search of potential images.

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But aside from professional astronomers and ESO’s public outreach team,

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not many other people have ventured into the vast archive.

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So how can we encourage people just like you 

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to go and delve into the archive

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and to test your skills at producing beautiful astronomical images

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with professional data?

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We knew, of course, that there are lots of talented amateur astronomers out there,

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but we had to find a way to get them excited about ESO’s data.

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And so we came up with the idea of a competition,

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ESO’s Hidden Treasures.

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The challenge was tough:

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find a dataset in the archive

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with the potential for making a visually stunning image,

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 and then process the data.

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As a reward for the hard work, however, we put up a great first prize:

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the chance to not only visit ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile,

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but to actually use it to observe the night sky.

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Nevertheless, despite the great prizes,

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we were a little worried that not enough people would be up for the challenge

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and that many participants would give up half way.

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We were in for a big surprise.

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The competition opened on 4 October 2010.

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Participants were asked to upload their entries to an ESO Flickr group

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that was created specifically for the competition.

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The competition was promoted via ESO’s Twitter Feed using the hashtag #esotreasures,

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and Facebook page by ESO’s Community Coordinator Oana Sandu.

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Tweets about the competition from people around the world

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were picked up by science journalists,

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creating valuable coverage of the competition in the media.

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To our surprise, entries quickly started coming in.

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By the end of the competition, we had almost 100 entries,

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which was a fantastic response.

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Once the competition had closed, the judging panel,

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which included science communication professionals

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and image processing specialists,

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met to evaluate many images.

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Several of the entrants submitted more than one image that deserved an award,

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so the judges made the decision to choose the ten best entrants,

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rather than the ten best images.

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This led to a total of 20 winning images.

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Russian amateur astrophotographer Igor Chekalin,

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a.k.a. Flickr user igorfp,

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caught the attention of the jury.

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Working from his home in the countryside,

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and with limited access to the internet,

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Igor’s skills and artistic eye won him first place in the competition

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for his wonderful image of Messier 78.

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The data of Messier 78 that Igor has found are really superb,

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both in terms of quality and in terms of depth.

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He has processed the raw images with great skill

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and he assembled them very well to produce this final mage.

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Igor has also applied some smart post-processing filters

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to enhance the details of the nebula.

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The colours are wonderfully subtle;

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they show the light diffused by the nebula

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and the dark dust that partially obscures it.

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In my opinion, this is one of the very best images ever obtained

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with the 2.2-metre telescope on La Silla.

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The competition proved

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that there are lots of talented amateur astronomers out there

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who are capable of producing really astonishing results with ESO’s observations,

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just like the pros.

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And finally,

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well done, Igor!

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I’m sure you are going to have a great time at Paranal,

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it’s a lot of fun to observe with the VLT.

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This is Dr J signing off for the ESOcast.

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Join me again next time for another cosmic adventure.

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ESOcast is produced by ESO, the European Southern Observatory.

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ESO, the European Southern Observatory, is the pre-eminent intergovernmental science and technology organisation in astronomy, 

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designing, constructing and operating the world’s most advanced ground-based telescopes.

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Transcription by ESO ; translation by —

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Now that you've caught up with ESO,

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head 'out of this world' with Hubble. 

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The Hubblecast highlights the latest discoveries of the world´s most recognized and prized space observatory,

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the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope