GREAT10 PASCAL challenge launches Monday 6th Dec

PASCAL GRavitational lEnsing Accuracy Testing 2010 (GREAT10)

We announce the launch of the gravitational lensing accuracy testing challenge
GREAT10. The challenge has two aspects, the star challenge and the more
demanding galaxy challenge.

The star challenge is to estimated the convolution kernel in astronomical images.
The kernel is sparsely sampled by stars in the images, which are coarsely pixelated and
contain noise. The challenge is to reconstruct the convolution kernel
at non-star positions.

The galaxy challenge is to measure the correlation function of the
shear effect (an additional 1% ellipticity caused by gravity and present in
every galaxy image) over 52 million simulated galaxy images. The
images are noisy and have been blurred by a known convolution kernel.

We provide the images, 1Tb in total, some development code, training data,
and more information here

http://www.great10challenge.info

The winner of the challenge will receive an iPad (or similar) and an expenses
paid trip to the final challenge workshop at JPL, Pasadena in September 2011.

The key dates associated with this challenge are :

* 6th December 2010 : Challenge Launch

* 26th-28th January 2011 : Challenge Workshop I, eScience Institute, Edinburgh

* 3rd-5th May 2011 : Challenge Workshop II, UCL, London

* 2nd September 2011 : Challenge Closes

* 26th-29th September 2011 : Final Challenge Workshop, JPL NASA, Pasadena