Hubble's Hidden Treasures 2012 Rules

In simple words, the rules of the competition, which are listed in full below, state that the submissions have to be produced from data from the Hubble Space Telescope, be previously unpublished ESA/Hubble or NASA, must not infringe any copyrights, have not been “painted” in an unscientific way and that ESA/Hubble and NASA are allowed to use the image afterwards against crediting. Additionally, for the basic image processing competition only, the standard online image manipulation tools provided in the Hubble Legacy Archive interface alone may be used.

General rules and regulations

1. The competition is organized by ESA/Hubble and the Education and Public Outreach Department of the European Southern Observatory, on behalf of the European Space Agency.
2. The competition is open to everyone (with no restriction as to nationality or residence), except ESA, NASA, AURA or ESO employees and contractors, and their immediate family. Children under the age of 18 must have their parents’ permission.
3. By submitting an image to the competition, you confirm that
   1. it was produced and processed by you (ie. your original work);
   2. it does not infringe the copyright or any other right of any third party.
4. The submitted image cannot duplicate an image already published in the spacetelescope.org or hubblesite.org galleries. If the submitted image is of a celestial object of which an image is already available in the gallery, it should be significantly different because a different instrument(s), channel(s) or filter(s) were used.
5. The submitted image must be based on data produced with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. These can be easily accessed through the Hubble Legacy Archive.
6. There is no restriction on the number of images submitted by anyone. Each entry will be judged separately.
7. An entry can be submitted by a group of people. However, there is only one prize per image. It is up to the members of the group to decide how to share it.
8. The competition accepts entries until 31 May 2012 at 23.59 CET.
9. By submitting an image, you grant NASA, ESA and ESO a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to use, publicly perform and publicly display your image, under the ESA/Hubble copyright rules described in http://www.spacetelescope.org/copyright/ (“Creative Commons – Attribution”), with credit to “NASA, ESA and Your Name”. The actual image published may be either the file you submitted; or a reprocessed image using the same dataset and same concept as yours may be published in which case you will be acknowledged in the credit as “NASA, ESA. Acknowledgement: Your Name”. Entries may be published on the spacetelescope.org, hubblesite.org, esa.int websites, or other affiliated web sites and made available for reuse under the terms of the Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution licence.
10. You agree that if you win a prize, your name and image can be used for public relations publications.
11. The images submitted will be evaluated by a panel of judges, including astrophotography specialists and astronomers. The decisions of the judges are final.

Specific rules for Hubble’s Hidden Treasures Competition

1. The image should be manipulated using only the tools available in the Hubble Legacy Archive’s interactive display function. Entries should take the form of a snapshot created using the interactive display’s ‘save’ function. If the image is too big to fit on your screen, you may combine several snapshots together in photo editing software providing you do not make other alterations.
2. The entries must be submitted via the Flickr group “Hubble’s Hidden Treasures” (http://www.flickr.com/groups/hubblehiddentreasures/), and your contact information including a valid email must be submitted upon request via your Flickr account. If you do not give us a valid email address within a reasonable period, you may forfeit your place in the competition. The email address will be used to contact authors and winners.
3. Entries must identify which datasets have been used, using the HLA dataset identification.
4. The images will be judged on their
   1. aesthetic value;
   2. originality.

Specific rules for Hubble's Hidden Treasures Image Processing competition

1. The raw data can be processed to remove the instrumental signature (bias, dark, flat-field). Pipeline processed datasets available in the archive can also be used. Cosmetic defects (cosmic rays, saturation bleeds, bad pixels, bad columns, vignetting...) can be removed (either manually or via algorithm). There is no restriction on how many frames can be combined, through any number of filters, from any (current or legacy) instrument. The dynamic range of the images can be adjusted using any function. Part of the frames can be masked, and small areas can be corrected via manual image edition (eg in GIMP or Photoshop) to correct blemishes such as cosmic rays, saturation bleed, bad pixels, ghosts, satellite trails, etc. Images with significant manual modifications (i.e. image painting) are not accepted. Image enhancements through filtering, sharpening, deconvolution, etc., are allowed.
2. Small gaps in Hubble data, such as chip gaps, or gaps between pointings in mosaics may be filled with data from other telescopes, however they may not be painted or cloned, and the source of the additional data must be declared.
3. Entries must identify which datasets have been used.
4. The entries must be submitted via the Flickr group Hubble’s Hidden Treasures – Image Processing (http://www.flickr.com/groups/hubblehiddentreasures_advanced/), and your contact information including a valid email must be submitted upon request via your flickr page. If you do not give us your email address within a reasonable period, you may forfeit your place in the competition. The email address will be used to contact authors and confirm competition winners. The jury can request a full-sized version of the final image, in TIFF or Photoshop or GIMP format for detailed evaluation.
5. The images will be judged on their
   1. aesthetic quality;
   2. processing quality;
   3. originality.