Australian Gemini Office IYA Imaging Contest

In 2009, the International Year of Astronomy, high school classes in Australia have a chance to use an hour of observing time on one of the world's largest optical telescopes, the 8-metre Gemini South telescope in the Andes Mountains of Chile.

How? By picking an object in the Southern sky and writing a winning explanation of why it would be interesting to digitally photograph.

See below for more contest details, and keep checking our News page for updates on the contest progress and for the latest exciting discoveries announced by Gemini.

Although this contest is specifically an IYA activity, we may run similar contests in future, targeting primary schools or astronomical societies.

Teachers: Please help us spread the word to your pupils about this exciting opportunity, by downloading and printing the contest flyer or advertisement and placing it in a prominent place in your classroom.

How to Enter

Entries for the 2009 Gemini School Astronomy Contest have now closed. We expect to run a similar contest again in 2010 - please check here regularly for updates, and watch the contest News page for an announcement of the winner.

What You May Win

The high school class with the best-ranked entry will have their object imaged by Gemini. The professionally processed picture will then be presented to the school by astronomers who will explain what the image reveals about the target. In addition, the winning image will appear on the cover of Australian Sky & Telescope magazine in early 2010.

The top three classes will be eligible to participate in a Live From Gemini program, an introduction to the Gemini telescopes provided via a video link to experts in one of the Gemini control rooms.

Selection of Winner

Judging of the entries will take place by a panel comprised of astronomers, educators, and science journalists. The selection criteria will be to find the entry that best describes both the scientific interest of the target and the visual appeal of the resulting image.

Target Limitations

To be observable during the time frame of June-August, there are restrictions on the allowed position of the object. Like latitude and longitude on the Earth, objects in the sky have coordinates in Right Ascension and Declination (see this page for an explanation). The targets for this contest must meet the following requirements:
1. Right Ascension (RA) greater than 14 hours OR less than 1 hour.
2. Declination (Dec) between -90 degrees and +10 degrees.

Hints and Suggestions

"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long walk down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space." ^[1]

So how to choose a target from amongst all that space? Here are a few ideas and things to keep in mind.

One approach is to decide what class of object would be interesting to study, and then to identify a particular example within the positional limitations given above. What kind of target would you like to see in your image... a galaxy cluster? an individual galaxy? (a spiral galaxy? an elliptical galaxy? an irregular galaxy?) a star cluster? a nebula? Once you've identified the class of object you're after, you could try searching online for specific targets.

To make sure the object is visible during the contest, you can search for its coordinates on SIMBAD, an enormous online catalogue of celestial objects. The coordinates you want to look at from SIMBAD are the ICRS coordinates on the first line. For example, the entry for M31 reads:
00 42 44.31 +41 16 09.4
meaning its RA is 00 hours, 42 minutes, 44.31 seconds; and its declination is +41 degrees, 16 arcminutes, 9.4 arcseconds. Because M31's declination is greater than +10 degrees, it is not an eligible target for the contest.

Astronomers use images to learn about all of the types of objects listed above:

They measure the sizes of objects and the locations of any companions. This can tell us about the masses of galaxies and the ages of nebulae.
They study the colors of stars and the brightness at different positions within an object. This can tell us about stellar ages and compositions, and the history of the object.
They examine the emission and absorption of light from various pockets of gas and dust. This can tell us about the physical processes going on in the gas.

What kinds of measurements could you make for your selected target?

An important item to remember is that the instrument used for the contest, the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS), will produce an image that is 5.5-arcminutes wide and 5.5-arcminutes high. Five arcminutes is about one-sixth the diameter of the Moon. That covers an area much larger than the cameras on the Hubble Space Telescope. So, whereas Hubble is great for seeing the details on small scales, Gemini excels in providing the larger context. The blurring effects of the atmosphere mean that the smallest features that will be resolved in the contest image will have angular sizes of about 0.8-arcseconds.

Try to think about the kinds of astronomy images that you find awe-inspiring. Often, these have a range of colours and a mixture of stars, gas, and/or dust. What features do you want your image to have?

The Canadian Gemini Office is running a similar contest for Canadian high school students right now. If you'd like to see the results of the previous Canadian contests, visit this page, or read the Gemini press releases (here and here).

For even more examples of what Gemini and GMOS can do, check out the Gemini image galleries. Note that if an object is already in the gallery, it's probably not a good choice for this contest.

Calendar

1 May: submission deadline.
early June: winning class and runners-up will be announced.
June-August: "Live From Gemini" interactive video sessions for top 3 classes.
September: presentation of image to winning class by astronomers from Gemini.

Contact Info

For further inquiries, please contact Dr. Christopher Onken of the Australian Gemini Office by e-mail at IYAcontest@mso.anu.edu.au, or by phone on (02) 6125 8039.

Details of Observations

Because the Gemini Observatory wants to make the best possible use of every part of the nighttime darkness, it matches the observations it obtains to the changing atmospheric conditions over the course of the night. As a result, it's not certain when any particular program will be observed. Therefore, we won't know precisely when the images for the contest will be taken, and the students participating in the winning program will not be able to travel to the telescope. When the observations are taken, the students will be notified and a message will be posted on the contest News page, which will be updated throughout the year.

The Gemini Observatory

Named for the constellation of Gemini, "the twins", the Gemini Observatory consists of a pair of telescopes. One of these is located atop Cerro Pachon in the Andes Mountains of Chile; the other is on top of Mauna Kea in Hawai'i. At 8-metres in diameter, the Gemini telescopes are among the largest optical telescopes in the world, and are the premier facilities to which the entire Australian astronomical community has access. The particular instrument used in the contest is GMOS, the Gemini Mulit-Object Spectrograph, which provides the ability both to take fantastic images and to study the spectra of several hundred objects at a time. Each of the Gemini telescopes has a copy of the GMOS instrument, and they are the most heavily used instruments in Gemini's toolbox. For more information about Gemini, visit the Gemini Observatory website, see the Gemini FAQ, or go to the home page of the Australian Gemini Office.

The International Year of Astronomy

In 1609, Galileo Galilei pointed his self-crafted telescope at the night sky and made the first telescopic observations of the heavens. Four hundred years later, the United Nations has declared 2009 to be the International Year of Astronomy (IYA), and we're celebrating Galileo's achievement and the tremendous progress humanity has made in the intervening centuries to build a better understanding of our universe. Throughout the year, in Australia and around the world, IYA events will be taking place to spread the excitement of astronomy into the lives of everyone who's looked up into the nighttime sky with wonder and awe.

For more information about the International Year of Astronomy, go to the main IYA website. To see a Calendar of IYA Events taking place near you, check out Australia's IYA home page.

Contest Organisers

The Australian Gemini Office
in conjunction with
Dr. Terry Bridges (Queen's University, Canada)
Mr. Robert Hollow (CSIRO/ATNF)
Ms. Helen Sim (CSIRO/ATNF)
Ms. Lesa Moore (Macquarie University/ACU-North Sydney)

Additional Legalities

This contest is open to high school classes in Australia. The Gemini Observatory image produced in conjunction with this contest shall be made available to the press and shall be subject to the Gemini Observatory Image Usage Policy. All decisions of the judging panel and the contest organisers shall be final.

Australian Gemini Office, ausgo -@- aao.gov.au

Gemini School Astronomy Contest: 2009 details