James Webb Data Visualization
- JENSEN RADER
- Jun 4, 2022
- 3 min read
Updated: Nov 2, 2022
Images being released from the James Webb Telescope are effective data visualizations, as long as there is a NASA scientist or an astronomer around to explain it...
I've always been fascinated by space and following the recent release of images and data from the James Webb Telescope, I wanted to attempt to apply this class to the data sets from NASA. A few weeks ago, I attended a presentation at the California State University, Sacramento planetarium that was hosted by professors in the astrology department. that planetarium was one of many across the United States that was able to display and analyze those images for public display. I covered this event for a news story that day at work, but it was able to combine a few of my passions and curiosities. Of course we saw the images captured by the telescope, but the planetarium director also showed side-by-side comparisons to the Webb images and the Hubble Telescope images of the same system. Then they included graphs and charts to explain what we are seeing in the images and their significance.
Is it effective?
Yes, I thought the presentation overall was very effective. But with something as complex and deep as space, I argue that the effectiveness is only as strong as the explanation. Space data needs to be dumbed down to a level that the average person can understand in order to be an effective visualization. Being at the planetarium for that presentation of the initial images and charts helped me understand what was discovered and how significant it was. However, the average person looking at the graph below without context, may not be able to understand the impact of the research or what the data means. If the audience does not understand the data, then it renders the visualization of the data ineffective. Space data is only as effective as the context provided by astronomers or NASA scientists.
What story is being told?
The purpose behind the mission of the James Webb Telescope, in the simplest terms I understood from the planetarium presentation, is to be able to look so far back into deep space, we can get a better understanding of how our solar system was created. The lens can look millions of lightyears behind Earth and outside of the Milky Way galaxy and find clusters of stars and other systems in order to compare those discoveries with what we already know. Images, like the one below, tell the story of systems outside of our own. The graphs, like the one mentioned above, is the research data behind what is captured in the images they took using the telescope.
The other story in these images, is the improvement of the technology that can capture these images, leading to higher quality data scientists can gather from the new telescope. The Webb Telescope is often compared to its predecessor the Hubble Telescope, which was launched under a similar mission statement to explore deep space.
Does the visual data leave questions unanswered?
I would argue that is does, but not for the average person. For non-astronomers, the graphs are complete, effective and informative. However, the images of space itself is so dense and compact with potential data, it leaves the scientists with many factors still unknown. There is so much to explore in such a small snapshot, it will take years to finalize what was captured by the Webb Telescope. Even then, it may still leave the data as more of a hypothetical theory than a concrete fact. I personally see no fallacies or problems within the data that would make this visualization inaccurate because I am not trained in that field. But given the nature of this experiment in space, there is only testing hypothesizes to see what evidence they can find. As of right now, this data stands to be true. But as with all science, until proven wrong using new data, these images and charts are the most current look into our solar system.
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