Student Image (IC 5332)

The winner of the student division of Australia's 2013 Gemini Astronomy Contest was Isobelle Teljega, who was in Year 8 at St. Margaret's Anglican Girls School in the Brisbane suburb of Ascot, Queensland, Australia. Her entry was submitted for her by Chris Farrelly, who is the Head of Faculty - Science. The school's Astronomy Club, which Mr. Farrelly supervises, had been a contest runner-up each of the previous two years.

Isobelle's contest entry had suggested that Gemini South obtain an image of the galaxy IC 5332, which is a large face-on spiral galaxy within the constellation Sculptor. In addition, the image contains a cluster of galaxies in the distant background.

The grand unveiling of the image took place at a school assembly on the morning of Tuesday, 17 September 2013. The unveiling was conducted by Professor Michael Drinkwater from the University of Queensland, who presented a framed copy of the Gemini image to Isobelle in front of her classmates. After the assembly, Isobelle and the other science students gathered to hear from Prof. Drinkwater and UQ graduate student, Sarah Sweet, about the many career paths that are available within science, particularly in astronomy. Finally, the students participated in a live video connection to the Gemini Observatory headquarters in Hawaii. Gemini's Public Information Outreach Manager, Peter Michaud, explained how each of Gemini's twin 8.1-metre-diameter telescopes operate and described some of the Observatory's latest scientific discoveries. Peter then took question after question from the students, who were clearly fascinated.

Technical Details: 

The image is composed from separate images in 4 different filters: g (blue), r (green), i (orange) and Hydrogen alpha (red). The exposure time in each filter was 3x90 sec in g, H-alpha, 3x75 sec in r, and 3x60sec in i. The field-of-view of the image is 9.8 x 5.4 arcmin, and it's been rotated CW 65 degrees (relative to the standard orientation where north is up and east is to the left).