In May 2012, The folks at Hubble asked members of the public to delve into Hubble's vast science archive to uncover pictures that had never been seen outside of the scientific community — and then to try their hand at processing the scientific data into attractive images. Here are the winners

First prize and winner of the public vote:

Josh Lake (USA) submitted a stunning image of NGC 1763, part of the N11 star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud.

**click on images for a larger view**

Second Prize:

Andre van der Hoeven, spiral galaxy Messier 77

"Since 1990, Hubble has made more than a million observations. We feature many of these on spacetelescope.org, and the most stunning are in our Top 100 gallery and iPad app.

But there are thousands of pictures in Hubble’s science archive that have only been seen by a few scientists. We call these images Hubble’s hidden treasures — stunning images of astronomical phenomena that have never been seen and enjoyed by the public.

Every week, we search the archive for hidden treasures, process the scientific data into attractive images and publish them as the Hubble Picture of the Week. But the archive is so vast that nobody really knows the full extent of what Hubble has observed.

This is where you come in.

Searching Hubble’s archive for hidden treasures is a lot of fun, and it’s pretty straightforward, even if you don’t have advanced knowledge. So we’re inviting you to come and help us find iconic Hubble images that have never before been shown to the public." Click here for more info

Third Prize:

Judy Schmidt (USA) Picture of XZ Tauri, a newborn star spraying out gas into its surroundings and lighting up a nearby cloud of dust, was the jury’s favourite.

Fourth Prize:

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.

Fifth Prize:

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. This image of Messier 96 was the jury’s favourite.

Sixth Prize