On Deep Space and the Imagination

How do we create our image of other worlds? The obvious answer — through instrumentation on space probes — is inadequate, because the raw data sent back by our spacecraft has to be assembled into the final images we see. Consider Hubble, which uses filters recording different wavelengths of light, and then combines them to create the image. Nor do we need confine ourselves to visible light, since we also get images in the infrared, and views filtered in whatever way will maximize science, like some of Cassini’s radar images of Titan. Instead of just seeing an image, we assemble it.

What you would see if you were actually there, in other words, isn’t necessarily what you get. I notice that Elizabeth Kessler, a doctoral student in the University of Chicago’s Committee on the History of Culture, has presented her work on Hubble and artistry at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington. The title of her talk, “Hubble’s Vision: Imaging, Aesthetics and Public Reception,” points to how much the Hubble data is in reality a translation by image specialists whose choices affect the final composition.

Here’s Kessler in a press release from the University of Chicago, made available via EurekAlert:

“There’s a lot of translation that occurs between the data the Hubble collects and the final images that are shared with the public,” Kessler explains. Translating raw data into the ‘pretty pictures’ that have become a staple of newspaper front pages requires careful image processing. Astronomers and image specialists strive for realistic representations of the cosmos, yet they make subjective choices regarding contrast, composition and color. The Hubble images are complex representations of the cosmos that balance both art and science. In that sense, as well as in their appearance and emotional impact, Kessler says they resemble 19th century Romantic landscape paintings, especially those of the American West.

“The aesthetic choices made result in a sense of majesty and wonder about nature and how spectacular it can be, just as the paintings of the American West did,” Kessler said. “The Hubble images are part of the Romantic landscape tradition. They fit that popular, familiar model of what the natural world should look like.”

NGC 4314Image: Astronomical ‘art’ that feeds the imagination. This Hubble telescope snapshot reveals clusters of infant stars that formed in a ring around the core of the barred-spiral galaxy NGC 4314. This stellar nursery, whose inhabitants were created within the past 5 million years, is the only place in the entire galaxy where new stars are being born. Credits: G. Fritz Benedict, Andrew Howell, Inger Jorgensen, David Chapell (University of Texas), Jeffery Kenney (Yale University), and Beverly J. Smith (CASA, University of Colorado), and NASA.

The image above is just one from Hubble’s endless gallery of celestial art. But consider, too, how often language has carried the sense of discovery that brings people to the study of astronomy and astrophysics. I recently re-read a creaky science fiction story from the 1930’s, Neil Jones’s “Planet of the Double Sun,” which ran in the February, 1932 issue of Amazing Stories. Jones would never be accused of being a great writer, but his depiction of the interstellar adventures of Professor Jameson, developed in a series of tales in the 1930’s, influenced Isaac Asimov’s robot stories (“What I responded to was the tantalizing glimpse of possible immortality and the vision of the world’s sad death,” Asimov would later say) and painted images of celestial wonders that shaped our view of interstellar travel.

Consider this scene from “Planet of the Double Sun,” in which Jameson and his robotic colleagues walk out onto a planet that, however scientifically inaccurate, surely helped give birth to that ‘sense of wonder’ that brought so many young people to the study of science:

From where he stood with his companions upon a comparatively lofty eminence, Professor Jameson gazed out over a silent sea whose waters spread away to meet the far distant horizon. The crystal clear atmosphere of the planet appeared to be of a rarefied nature, or else it supported little dust, for several stars of the first and second magnitudes were clearly visible within the sapphire vault of the sky’s illimitable depths. The blue sun, being of a slightly fainter intensity than its lesser companion, now occupied the zenith, being not quite directly overhead, while the orange sun rested upon the watery horizon, preparing to sink out of sight…

The orange sun’s burnished disc drew gradually toward the vague line which marked the blending of violet water with sapphire sky. The burning orb slowly sank among a few wisps of multicolored clouds drifting on the far distant horizon of water like dim ghost ships. Sinking, sinking, as if reluctantly bidding its blue contemporary farewell, it passed slowly into the translucent depths of the peaceful sea which lapped a distant shore.

We need the imagining of such places, even as we refine the science to understand why some celestial scenes are more likely than others. The blue star in Jones’ scenario presents a number of problems in orbital dynamics, but many of our recent breakthroughs have found places even stranger — who would have dreamed of the ‘hot Jupiters’ that hug their stars in orbits that take mere days to complete? And who knows what other scenes we’ll find that make the description of Jones seem tame by comparison? On that score, be aware that the superb space artist Lynette Cook will soon release Infinite Worlds: An Illustrated Voyage to Planets Beyond Our Sun, which brings many of these worlds, already found by science, to realistic life.

A Thought for the Weekend

“…in the historical perspective, the seafaring nations of Europe grew mighty from the wealth returned from the discovery and settlement of the new world. Those societies who stayed home languished, those who embraced the unknown prospered. Seen broadly, we’re a species which owes its current success to exploration. Exploration generates opportunities which lead to economic strength, and exploration yields situational awareness which creates survival options. It contributes directly to our survival, not by giving us a second home if we screw this one up – I think that’s kind of a lame argument – but by giving us interplanetary technical capability which will allow us to police and secure our own backyard, the solar system. It might possibly give us the means to deliver ourselves from destruction in this cosmic shooting gallery.

“Right now if we discovered a comet nucleus or an asteroid on impact course with Earth, we could do exactly what the dinosaurs did, and we could stare upward with a dumb look on our faces. We need to evolve beyond the dinosaurs. And maybe the ultimate goal of the great Darwinian engine churning away on this planet since the days of heavy bombardment was to evolve beyond the role of helpless victim. We’re not going to do it sitting here.”

— James Cameron at the AIAA’s First Space Exploration Conference (February, 2005)

Mars Story Update

The Bad Astronomy site is reporting that Space.com’s story about possible life on Mars has blown up. There apparently is no upcoming article in Nature, nor did researchers Carol Stoker and Larry Lemke engage in a private meeting with space officials to discuss the implications of their work along Spain’s Rio Tinto. You can read the whole thing here.

Later: Space.com’s revised story is now available.

NASA Denies Mars Claim

This news release from NASA headquarters may slow down the current life on Mars story:

News reports on February 16, 2005, that NASA scientists from Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., have found strong evidence that life may exist on Mars are incorrect.

NASA does not have any observational data from any current Mars missions that supports this claim. The work by the scientists mentioned in the reports cannot be used to directly infer anything about life on Mars, but may help formulate the strategy for how to search for martian life. Their research concerns extreme environments on Earth as analogs of possible environments on Mars. No research paper has been submitted by them to any scientific journal asserting martian life.

Centauri Dreams note: The NASA press release discusses the work of Carol Stoker and Larry Lemke at Ames Research Center, published as an exclusive by Space.com and described in the February 17 entry below. Today’s entry describing Vittorio Formisano’s work on formaldehyde in the Martian atmosphere has not been addressed by NASA.

Solar Sail Launch Now Scheduled for April

The Planetary Society offers an update on its Cosmos 1 solar sail with the announcement that the spacecraft launch date has slipped to April. Planetary Society executive director Louis Friedman said all flight components had been tested and a full-mission sequence simulated with the spacecraft’s on-board computer. The sails are not yet attached to the spacecraft, but will be folded for attachment within the next two weeks. Cosmos 1 will then undergo vacuum chamber testing to check for leaks in its compressed air and fuel lines before being shipped to the launch area. Launch will be aboard a Volna rocket from a Delta III Russian submarine in the Barents Sea.

“There is no way to simulate or adequately test how a sail, which is 30 meters long and 5-millionths of a meter thick, will behave under weightless conditions in a vacuum,” writes Friedman. “It could oscillate, bounce around and even rip apart. Or it could spread wide and sail effortlessly on beams of light as we hope it will. Our team has conducted many, many ground tests – but ultimately, the only test that counts will be the actual flight.”

Testing Cosmos 1 flight moduleImage: Moscow, NPO Lavochkin, December 2004: The flight electronics are tested. A framework that exactly duplicates the size and shape of Cosmos 1 allows access to all the electronic equipment while they are tested in the same relative positions they will occupy in the spacecraft. On the lower level are most of the electronics boxes, notably the flight computer and the radios. In the lower center area the 3-axis micro-accelerometer can be seen. On the top structure are placed several antennas, two small solar panels (for backup power) and the energetic particle analyzer instrument. Credit: The Planetary Society (c)

And elsewhere, Space technology: Setting sail for history is a good backgrounder by Tony Reichhardt on the Cosmos 1 mission and Louis Friedman’s role in it. It includes this interesting bit about NASA’s own work on solar sails:

Although no solar-sail missions have yet been approved, [Tim] Van Sant [of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland] is spending about $10 million a year laying the technological groundwork. This year two pioneers of solar-sail development, L’Garde of Tustin, California, and ABLE Engineering of Goleta, California, will test different designs for 20-m sails in a giant vacuum chamber at NASA’s Plum Brook facility in Ohio.

ABLE’s sail is made of an extremely thin new polymer called CP-1, only 2.5 micrometres thick — half as thick as the aluminized Mylar on Cosmos 1. “If you sneeze, you’ll send this stuff across the table,” says Van Sant. Thinner and lighter is better when it comes to solar sails, but flimsy films are also more prone to tearing. Even the reinforced sails of Cosmos 1 won’t last forever: within a month of launch they will begin to degrade in the harsh sunlight. But the short flight should be long enough to demonstrate the principle of solar sailing, and if successful will open the heavens to other solar-powered craft.