Events

Join the NASA Night Sky Network on Tuesday, February 25, at 6:00 PM Pacific Time (9:00 PM Eastern) along with Joseph DePasquale, where we’ll discuss the James Webb Space Telescope and the two-plus years of exciting results we’ve received here on Earth.

The universe is filled with beauty beyond even our wildest imaginations. Sophisticated observatories such as the James Webb Space Telescope help us peer into that sublime reality, and it is to the great fortune of humanity that these science instruments produce data that captures the essence of the natural beauty of the cosmos.

However, without a careful eye toward revealing that beauty, the data would remain black-and-white snapshots for scientific analysis rather than admiration. Astronomical image processors blend the artistic visual principles with the scientific knowledge of how these observatories operate and the objects they study to compose images that capture the imagination and inspire the viewer to learn more about our universe.

In this talk, Principal Science Visuals Developer Joseph DePasquale will provide some background on the observatory and the art and science of image processing that reveals the inherent beauty of the infrared universe.

About Joseph DePasquale:

Joe DePasquale is the principal science visuals developer in the Office of Public Outreach at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, MD. Joe’s work requires a unique blend of science and art to bring data from the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes to life in high-quality, colorful views of the cosmos. Before joining STScI in 2017, Joe was the Science Imager for NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, where he worked for 16 years following his undergraduate training in Astronomy & Astrophysics at Villanova University. Joe has an extensive background in astronomy, art, and photography, giving him a unique skill set that is well-suited to bringing observatory data to life with richly detailed imagery.