Essential Information

Location
Royal Observatory

20 Jan 2011

Last year the European Southern Observatory (ESO) decided to open its vast archives of astronomical data to amateur astronomers to see if they could find any hidden treasures. Terabytes of data spanning many years, instruments and technologies were made available. Anyone willing to put in the extensive time and effort required to process the raw grey-scale data to produce new images could enter ESO's Hidden Treasurers 2010 astrophotography competition. The amazing winning images and all those submitted throughout the competition can be found in the competition's Flickr group.
 
Don't fancy searching through huge amounts of ESO data for that perfect image, but still have an interest in astrophotography? Maybe our Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition is for you instead. Also powered by Flickr, the 2011 competition was launched on the 20th January. Anyone can join the Flickr group to share their images with our community, with no obligation to enter the competition.

If you would like to submit your photos to the competition you can upload 5 in total any time up to 13th July 2011 at noon (GMT). The winners will be announced at a special award ceremony at the Observatory on 8 September 2011, and the very next day the winning images will be on display for the public to enjoy in the Astronomy Photographer of the Year exhibition. You can also look through all the photos in the Flickr group through our special gallery interactive, you could even find yours!

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Tom Lowe's winning Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2010 photo - Blazing Bristlecone

This year we are also offering the opportunity for any member of the Flickr group to select a gallery of their favourite photos. Each month we'll choose a gallery and use it to make a planetarium short. This will then be shown in London's only planetarium here at the Observatory. We are particularly looking for galleries that link all the photos together with an interesting story or theme.

Whether you are a keen astrophotographer or prefer looking at the universe through your computer screen we hope you will get involved in this year's Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition. You can keep in touch with the Astronomy Team via our Twitter feed @ROGAstronomers, or on the Observatory's Facebook page. We'll be posting updates that we think could inspire your astrophotography, but we'd also love to hear from you about your top tips for beginners and experts alike.

Get involved and help us make it the best competition yet!