H – How You Can Help NASA Process Hubble’s Pics [News]

H is for Hubble Space Telescope, today’s post for the A-Z Blogging Challenge.

It seems like everyone with even a casual knowledge of astronomy knows about the Hubble Space Telescope. Launched in 1990, the telescope allows a much deeper view of the Universe, because it doesn’t have Earth’s light to inhibit its view. So far, Hubble has over fifty terabytes of data to sort through, and NASA has been cleaning up and uploading photos for years to amaze the public. However, most of them has never been seen except by a few scientists. Seems like NASA needs a little help getting through all of Hubble’s photos. That’s why NASA announced a new project called Hubble’s Hidden Treasures. They’ve opened up their archives for anyone to locate a photo, process it by adjusting contrast and color, and then send it to NASA’s Flickr group. For those with more advanced photo editing knowledge and tools, you can even download the raw photo and process it through Photoshop or GIMP. I think becoming the discoverer of a stunning new photo of heavenly bodies is motivation enough. But as an added incentive, NASA is giving the best amateur photographer an iPod Touch, an autographed photo from an astronaut, and some other swag. Still, in a way, we’re all winners from this contest, because it will mean more amazing photos available from this truly historic telescope. You can find more details on the contest at the Hidden Treasures project website.

Would you join the Hidden Treasures mission for NASA? How has the Hubble telescope changed your view of the Universe?

[Image Source: spacetelescope.org]

Related Posts

• 5 Biggest STAR TREK Moments Aboard the Space Shuttle
• X-Prize Wants to Give You a Working Tricorder
• Top 20 Fictional Astronauts of All Time
• 8 Movies Every Geek Should Own

This post is part of the month long “A-Z Challenge.” For 27 days, we’ll be choosing a letter from the alphabet and crafting a post around it. To read more of the posts in the series click here. To find out more about the challenge go here.

Hosts: Arlee Bird at Tossing it Out, Alex J. Cavanaugh, Stephen Tremp at Breakthrough Blogs, Jenny Pearson at Pearson Report, Matthew McNish at The QQQE, Tina Downey atLife is Good, Jeremy Hawkins at Retro-Zombie, DL Hammons at Cruising Altitude, Shannon Lawrence at The Warrior Muse, Elizabeth Mueller, Damyanti Biswas at Amlokiblogs, Karen Gowen at Coming Down the Mountain, and Konstanz Silverbow at No Thought 2 Small. Check the Facebook page and the Twitter hashtag is #AtoZChallenge.