Blog Archive

Hey amateurs! ESA's running an image processing contest: "Hubble's Hidden Treasures!"

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/03/27 04:26 CDT

Here's a newly announced contest that is right up my alley and, I hope, of interest to regular readers of this blog. ESA has just announced "Hubble's Hidden Treasures," a contest to encourage what I've been trying to get people to do for years: trawl through the Hubble archives to find unappreciated tresures of photos and make them pretty for public consumption. They have two categories, one for newbies (who can use image processing tools provided on ESA's website) and one for more serious amateurs (who can use other software).

Snapshots From Space Video: Revealing Jupiter's (Mostly) Unseen Treasures

Posted by Mat Kaplan on 2012/03/18 01:46 CDT | 2 comments

Tens of thousands of Jupiter images were taken by the Voyager spacecraft, but relatively few have been processed to reveal their true beauty and wonder. The latest Snapshots video from Emily Lakdawalla explains why.

Pretty Picture: A snapshot of Voyager 1's departure from Jupiter

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/03/13 04:08 CDT

In this week's Snapshots from Space video, I talk about the Voyager 1 images of Jupiter -- how many there are (tens of thousands), and what a challenge they represent for image processors. But, I promise, the effort is worth it. Here's just one example: it's a color, crescent view of Jupiter, taken by Voyager 1 as it departed.

Cassini image of Saturn and Mimas, lit by ringlight, processed by Gordan Ugarkovic

Pretty picture: A study in ringlight

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/03/08 02:27 CST

Clearly, this is Saturn, and its rings, and if you look closer you can see a tiny circle, on top of the rings, which is Mimas, and two stars in the background. It should look weird to you that while the rings are bright, Mimas is a black dot. What is happening here? Nearly everything in this picture is lit by light that has not arrived directly from the Sun.

Pretty pictures: Voyager 2 at Jupiter

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/03/02 01:22 CST

Here are two perfect examples of Voyager 2's amazing untapped treasures.

Snapshots From Space: NASA's Treasure Trove of Unprocessed Images

Posted by Mat Kaplan on 2012/02/27 10:22 CST

The second episode of Emily Lakdawalla's new video series reveals the gigantic library of solar system images captured by NASA spacecraft, and explains why we've seen so few of them. Emily says they're all online, waiting for space geeks to turn them into gold.