Mexican wins the contest on the most beautiful astronomical image

The Mexican researcher of the European Southern Observatory (ESO), Joel Sánchez Bermúdez won with his team, composed of the Spanish Antxón Alberdi and Rainer Schödel, the prize for the reconstruction of a more beautiful and accurate astronomical image said the award was awarded at the Congress of the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE).

The Interferometric Imaging Beauty Contest is a contest which aims to test software and methodological capabilities for the reconstruction of interferometric images in the spectrum infrared. The reconstruction of this type of images is fundamental in modern astronomy to understand the phenomena that occur every day in the universe.

The dynamic of the competition is that expert teams and participants from around the world receive a series of data obtained from the simulations made by the organizers according to the parameters of the instruments and telescopes. From there, the teams process the interferometric data and create an image ; the most beautiful and accurate according to the data is chosen as the winner .

The winning image recreates a central star with an elongated powder disc (elongated) and an asymmetric glow, with a planet in formation . This type of young stars is common in the universe and it is thought that our solar and solar system has had a similar training process.

"This competition serves as a reference to establish the limits and scope of the technology that exists in the field of infrared interferometry ," said Joel Sánchez in an interview with Agencia Informativa Conacyt.

of the image, the physical parameters of the observed object must be delivered so experts from the universities of Cambridge, Lyon and Leuven were needed. The results were presented at the SPIE Congress on June 14 in Austin, Texas.

The competition has been held every two years for 16 years, in previous editions, teams and researchers have reconstructed images of stars, star clusters, and discs around the world. Stars and planets from interferometric data.

Astronomical Interferometry is an observational technique that allowed astronomers to observe stars and galaxies with as much detail as possible. This technique allows you to combine two or more telescopes at the same time to observe an astronomical object. The resolution obtained is proportional to the separation between the different telescopes combined.

"For an interferometer such as the Very Large Telescope Interferometer, located in the Atacama Desert in Chile, the level of detail achieved is equivalent to seeing a five-peso coin at the surface of Luna, "explained Sánchez Bermúdez.

This is the second time that Joel Sánchez Bermúdez is the winner of this contest, who placed him as one of reconstructive astronomers the most recognized in the world by the quality and precision of your work. The first time was in 2014 and he was still a PhD student.

In this edition of the competition, specialists at the international level have had to reconstruct, starting from interferometric data a star in formation with a dust disk and a planet. This is a phenomenon similar to the way astronomers think that the solar system was formed. The data used by the participants was obtained from two of the world's largest interferometers, the United States High Angular Resolution Astronomy Center (CHARA) and the Very Large Telescope Interferometer in Chile.

The line of research of Dr. Joel Sánchez Bermúdez revolves around the badysis of interferometric data for the study of large-mbad stars, which are the stars that produce virtually all the ingredients of which the universe, so that they acquire a particular relevance to study all astronomical phenomena.

"The study of this type of stars with interferometry is important to understand the evolution of these stars and their effect on the chemical evolution of galaxies" he concluded.