Janice R. Andrews
The world has been enthralled with the James Webb Space Telescope’s (JWST) breathtaking views of the universe, which range from clusters of far-off galaxies to shimmering star nurseries. Skilled image processors like Joe DePasquale, who turn raw data into works of art, are responsible for these amazing sights. Principal science visuals developer DePasquale of the Space Telescope Science Institute gave an exclusive peek at his creative process for these stunning photographs, which include the well-known Deep Field and Tarantula Nebula.
Image Processing: An Art and Science
NASA released the first full-color space photos taken by the JWST two years ago. The stunning photos we see are the product of days or even weeks of painstaking labor by image processors who take in raw telescope data and turn it into something beautiful. Upon first return to Earth, JWST’s raw photos frequently take the form of blank, black boxes. To bring out their hidden beauty, a combination of scientific understanding, intuition, and occasionally a little Photoshop is required.
According to DePasquale, the procedure entails progressively bringing to light details—which are occasionally startling—in the raw photos. For instance, he was astounded to find little spots surrounding some core galaxies when working on the Deep Field photograph. These dots proved to be star clusters in the form of globular clusters encircling extremely far-off galaxies. “To be able to pull out that much detail in just this tiny part of the sky — seeing that in such clarity was amazing,” DePasquale stated.
The Difficulty of Exceptional Detail
It took many suspenseful months after the JWST’s 2021 launch before it could start taking pictures of the universe’s furthest regions. There were three hundred possible places for the telescope to go wrong throughout its unfolding and full deployment in orbit. “We watched every step along the way — the mirrors unfolding, the sunshield deploying, all of these things happening,” DePasquale said. Luckily, everything went according to plan with the deployment, enabling the telescope to take beautiful pictures like the Deep Field, which displays hundreds of galaxies.
The Deep Field image processing was not a simple operation. The final image is a stitched composite of four separate photos. DePasquale had to manually correct the lighting in each panel using Photoshop after seeing that the brightness fluctuated. After completing the procedure, which took almost two weeks, a brilliant picture of the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 was produced.
Examining the Universe from Above
The most potent telescope ever sent into orbit, the JWST can view what the cosmos looked like some 250 million years after the Big Bang. With ground-breaking findings over the last two years, including the first photos of stars forming inside the Pillars of Creation and the four most distant galaxies ever viewed, it has radically altered our knowledge of the universe.
“Hubble and Webb are telescopes with incredibly high angular resolution. DePasquale stated, “They’re able to resolve very small details in these really distant objects.” The Tarantula Nebula, a star-forming cloud of gas and dust situated in the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy 170,000 light-years from Earth, is one of the most beautiful photos processed by DePasquale. Webb’s enormous mirror enables it to gather a sizable amount of light from whatever item it examines, even at such a great distance, so that it can take strikingly detailed photographs of far-off objects.
The Meeting Point of Art and Science
Science and art are both involved in the processing of raw space photos. DePasquale sought to emphasize the central cluster of hot, young stars in the Tarantula Nebula image. He did this by increasing the contrast between the image’s light and dark areas, giving the nebula’s billowing clouds a white glow and the budding stars a vivid blue glow. Photoshop is used for manual image manipulation for the majority of this work.
“Our work shifts from being purely analytical and scientific to something more subjective, akin to that of a photographer. We make aesthetic decisions based on science on how best to handle the data to bring out the most important scientific aspects of it,” DePasquale said. His and his colleagues’ efforts guarantee that the public sees the breathtaking beauty of space in addition to gaining a deeper comprehension of the cosmos.
To sum up, the JWST’s output of photographs is evidence of the expertise and commitment of image processors such as Joe DePasquale. Through their labor, the cosmos is brought closer to us all and the majesty of it is captured in stunning graphics that are created from raw telescope data.
