Images of the cosmos provide snapshots of various phases of life and death, different physical phenomena, found in locations across the known Universe. Today, some 400 years after Galileo created his, modern telescopes have enabled us to “see” what the human eye cannot. This new generation of ground- and space-based telescopes has created an explosion of images for the public to explore.
This survey will study your perception of multi-wavelength astronomical imagery and the effects of the scientific and artistic choices in processing astronomical data. The images come from a variety of space and ground-based observatories, including the Chandra X-ray Observatory, Hubble Space Telescope, Spitzer Space Telescope, the Very Large Array, the Hinode satellite, and many others. Evaluation of such valuable data will benefit astronomy across the electromagnetic spectrum of astronomical images, and may help visualization of data in other scientific disciplines.
September 1, 2009 update:
Our first paper on the preliminary results is now in preparation. In the meantime, NASA's Blueshift podcast interviewed Dr. Randall Smith of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, a collaborator on the Aesthetics & Astronomy project that is looking into how the public perceives multi-wavelength astronomical imagery. Randall shares some surprising early results from the project that may change the way we communicate with images.