Astronomy Python - Webb's First Deep Field - Marking the Edges of the Galaxies

 In Astronomy, the image taken by telescopes of deep space field, galaxies, planets may appear to be complex - it may be difficult to find boundaries of objects when objects are too near.

Or 

simply one would like to know the shape of the object.

Edge detection technique is used in image processing for finding the boundaries of objects within the image.

Edge detection would be very useful while analyzing such difficult images.

Below is the sample image taken by James Webb telescope.

Image Credits:NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

Below is grey image(left) and edge detection image(right)

An edge detection operator used in the above example is called as Canny edge detector

Below is the python code used.

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import cv2

import numpy as np

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

# read the image

image = cv2.imread("E:\\astronomy_related\\edge_detection\\webb_first_deep_field.jpeg")

# convert it to grayscale

gray = cv2.cvtColor(image, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)

# show the grayscale image

plt.imshow(gray, cmap="gray")

plt.show()

# perform the canny edge detector to detect image edges

edges = cv2.Canny(gray, threshold1=30, threshold2=100)

plt.imshow(edges, cmap="gray")

plt.show()

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To know more about  Canny Edge detection please visit below link

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canny_edge_detector

Credits-

Image Credit

IMAGE: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

Webb's First Deep Field (NIRCam Image)

https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/035/01G7DCWB7137MYJ05CSH1Q5Z1Z?Category=03-galaxies&Collection=First%20Images

Code Credit

https://www.thepythoncode.com/article/canny-edge-detection-opencv-python