First prize winner, image processing category. Josh Lake (USA) submitted a stunning image of NGC 1763, part of the N11 star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud. ESA/Hubble had previously published an image of an area just adjacent to this, based on observations by the same team. Josh took a different approach, producing a bold two-colour image which contrasts the light from glowing hydrogen and nitrogen. The image is not in natural colours -- hydrogen and nitrogen produce almost indistinguishable shades of red light that our eyes would struggle to tell apart -- but Josh's processing separates them out into blue and red, dramatically highlighting the structure of the region. As well as narrowly topping the jury's vote, Josh Lake also won the public vote. #

Andre van der Hoeven (Netherlands) came a close second in the jury vote. His image of the spiral galaxy Messier 77 is highly attractive, and is also an impressive piece of image processing, combining a number of datasets from separate instruments into one amazing picture. #

Taking fourth prize in image processing, Renaud Houdinet (France) submitted a hugely ambitious mosaic of Hubble images. Chamaeleon I is a large nebula near the south celestial pole, and it does not fit into a single Hubble image. Renaud painstakingly tiled the exposures together. Despite the small gaps between the Hubble images, the jury was impressed by the technical achievement of putting together this ambitious vista. Houdinet said "Sometimes, things don't turn out as they ought... It started as something promising, unfortunately it soon turned out there were quite a few 'gaps' between tiles that maybe weren't so obvious looking at the footprint... It was a learning experience though!" #

Ninth prize in image processing was awarded to Nick Rose for his image of Lensing Cluster Abell 68. Gravity of the galaxies in the foreground is distorting light coming from further away, leading to the 'smearing' and twisting appearance of distant galaxies. #

Robert Gendler (USA) is a well known figure in the amateur image processing world. His version of Hubble's image of NGC 3190 is the default desktop image on new Apple computers. Robert submitted a number of excellent images into the competition. This image of galaxy M96 was the jury's favorite. #

Taking third prize for image processing was Judy Schmidt (USA), who entered this picture of XZ Tauri, a newborn star spraying out gas into its surroundings and lighting up a nearby cloud of dust. This was a challenging dataset to process, as Hubble only captured two colors in this area. Nevertheless, the end result is an attractive image, and an unusual object that we would never have found without her help. #