A competition to develop new algorithms that measure the tiny distortions in galaxy images caused by dark matter. The challenge is to measure the ellipticity of 100,000 simulated galaxies. There are many ways to estimate ellipticity – part of the challenge is to develop new ways, or apply different ways, of doing this.

The aim is to measure the shapes of galaxies in order to reconstruct the gravitational lensing signal in the presence of noise and a known Point Spread Function. The signal is a very small change in the galaxies’ ellipticity, (e.g. an exactly circular galaxy image would be changed into an ellipse).

By submitting an entry in the challenge you agree that a discussion of the method may appear in an article that will be submitted to a scientific journal for publication. All participants are encouraged to provide code and documentation of their methods. Winning participants are required to provide code, as well as a description of their algorithm in document form.

The prize will be an expenses paid trip to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California to attend the GREAT10 challenge workshop “Image Analysis for Cosmology”.

Project owners + coordinators:
Thomas D. Kitching