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An Exploration of Astronomical Techniques of Visualization UCL ANTHROPOLOGY Working Paper No. 11/2013 UCL Anthropology Working Papers Series Rosalie Allain SPECTRUM OF VISIBILITY: AN EXPLORATION OF ASTRONOMICAL TECHNIQUES OF VISUALIZATION Dissertation submitted in 2011 for the MA Material and Visual Culture UCL Anthropology University College London, 14 Taviton Street, London WC1H 0BW Spectrum of Visibility: An Exploration of Astronomical Techniques of Visualization Rosalie Allain Figure 1: Chandra visualises halo around the X-ray source Cygnus X-3 (NASA, SRON, MPE, 2000) This paper is based on a dissertation submitted in 2011 as part of the MA in Material and Visual Culture in the Department of Anthropology, UCL. 1 Abstract Based on research conducted with the Astrophysics Group at Imperial College London, this paper examines astronomical images to illuminate the practices and categories of the visual within astronomy. By identifying the origin of these images in an initial transformation of light, I frame astronomical image making as a technical process. This study is an initial attempt at a Latourian inspired ‘visual-symmetrical’ anthropology which gives equal weight to the roles of the human and non-human, and spheres of the visible and invisible, through a tentative anthropology of light. The paper first gives an overview of the literature and theoretical approaches to the study of images. It then examines the techniques of visualisation through which photons are transformed into data, then images, then mediators which are made to refer back to the original celestial phenomenon. The study goes onto explore how astronomical images lie at the intersection of processes of mediation and mediality, and then perception and technology. I conclude by considering the category of the visual in astronomy, which is shown to be constructed in tandem with these images. The images themselves emerge at the triadic confluence of techniques, reference and the visual. I propose the concept of a ‘spectrum of the visible’ to expose how the visible/invisible binary is collapsed within these images and to highlight how the visual, both within and without astronomy, is a fragmented, heterogeneous, hybrid movement. 2 List of Contents Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………………7 Chapter 1: Literature Review………………………………………………………………...............9 1.1 Imaging Disciplines………………………………………………………… 9 1.2 Images in the Sciences and the Science in the Images…………………………..11 1.3 Towards an Anthropology of Light…………………….……………………......16 Chapter 2: Methodology………………………………………………………………………………18 2.1 Symmetrical Anthropology……………………………………………………...18 2.2 Photo-eliciting the Expert………………………………………………………..19 2.3 Writing Inconceivable Worlds…………………………….……………………..21 Chapter 3: The Operational Sequence of Light: From Photons to Data……………………….23 Chapter 4: The Imaging of Light: From Data to Images…………………………………………39 Chapter 5: On Mediations and Mediality…………………………………………………………..52 Chapter 6: From Light to Sight: the Perception of Astronomical Images……………………..66 6.1 Techno-sensorial Translations…………………………………………………....66 6.2 What Colours do in Astronomical Images……………………………………….72 6.3 Astronomical [Un]realism………………………………………………………..83 Chapter 7: The Spectrum of Visibility………………………………………………………………88 7.1 The Visual as Excessive and Elusive……….……………………………………88 7.2 The Movement of the Visual………………………………………………….….96 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………………….104 Glossary……………………………………………………………………………………..107 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………………...109 3 List of Illustrations Figure 1: Chandra visualises halo around the X-ray source Cygnus X-3 Figure 2: The electromagnetic spectrum Figure 3a: Chandra X-Ray image of AGN, raw data Figure 3b: Chandra X-Ray Image of AGN, cleaned version of Figure 3.a Figure 3c: Chandra X-Ray Image, Stacked Figure 4: A spectrum of the quasar ULAS J112010641 Figure 5: An Optical Infrared Image of the quasar ULAS J112010641 Figure 6a: inspection images of potential quasars Figure 6b: inspection images of potential quasars with background inverted Figure 7: Elliptical Galaxy NGC 4881 Figure 8: The pedocomparator Figure 9: Chandra X-ray Telescope’s Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS) Figure 10: An example of a diffraction spike in a raw data image Figure 11: Raw and cleaned data of the supernova remnant* W49B Figure 12: Journal Illustration of Supernova Remnant W49B Figure 13: The dimensional translations of the CMB as globe and as flat map Figure 14: The Crab Nebula Figure 15: A "Rose" Made of Galaxies Highlights Hubble's 21st Anniversary Figure 16: Starburst Galaxy M82 Figure 17: Visible View of Pillar and Jets Figure 18: Hubble Snaps a Splendid Planetary Nebula Figure 19: Supernova Remnant N 63A Menagerie Figure 20: Starburst Cluster Shows Celestial Fireworks Figure 21: Star Cluster NGC 2074 in the Large Magellanic Cloud Figure 22: Spitzer and Hubble Create Colourful Masterpiece Figure 23: Hubble Photographs Grand Design Spiral Galaxy M81. Figure 24: Stars Bursting to Life in the Chaotic Carina Nebula Figure 25: An assortment of spirals 4 Figure 26: Hubble Deep Field – North Figure 27: Two natural-colour images Figure 28: The Bubble Nebula (NGC 7635): Figure 29: Three Moons Cast Shadows on Jupiter Figure 30: Supernova remnant N 63A visualised in x-ray (left) and composite (right) images Figure 31: Four images of W49B supernova remnant Figure 32: Complex Dust Disk, Expected Birthplace of Planets, Around Star HD 141569A Figure 33: Hubble Deep Field: False-Colour Image Showing Distant Galaxies and Stars in Red Figure 34: A Possible Type 2 Quasar Veiled Black Hole Figure 35: Comparison between x-ray image of distant galaxy cluster, a point source and a computer model Figure 36: Nearby Quasar 3C 273 Figure 37: Images showing location and host galaxies (blue objects) of two x-ray flashes Figure 38a: Galaxy Cluster Abell 1689 and galaxy A1689-zD1 Figure 38b: Three close ups of galaxy A1689-zD1 Figure 39: Six Primitive Galaxies at the End of Representation Figure 40a: Lensed Object MACS0647-JD1 Figure 40b: Three Strongly Lensed Images of a Candidate z≈11 Galaxy. Figure 41: A radio-loud quasar with redshift z=4.72 Figure 42: The electromagnetic spectrum, showing the different regions of light overlapping. 5 Acknowledgements This research would not have been possible without funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. I would like to thank my supervisor Chris Pinney for his intellectual generosity and all his help and continued patience in the face of my confusion – and for inspiring me with the concept of ‘Spectrum of Visibility’. I would like to thank my tutor Chris Tilley and Charles Stewart for teaching me about space and time and for their encouragement this year. I would also like to thank Ludovic Coupaye for his unending enthusiasm, inspiration and support for my work, and for giving me the idea and confidence to write about light. I would like to extend my deepest thanks and gratitude to all the astronomers I interviewed and members of the Imperial Astrophysics Group for welcoming me into their world, and especially Roberto Trotta. To Aude, Frances and Louis - for reminding me that there is nothing wrong with experiencing research and writing as an emotional process. To my parents, Seb, Sara and Emilia for their unending support. In memory of Thomas Heath. 6 Introduction The world – that tricky category – turned its eyes upwards last week with excitement and anticipation with the news that a star had exploded in another galaxy and would be visible through binoculars from the planet Earth (BBC News, 2011). This twenty-one million year old image thus imprinted itself upon the retinas of countless humans, mediated by a simple network comprised of one human unit and two non-human units: light and binoculars. In this paper I propose to investigate similarly ancient and distant, although more densely mediated non-human images (of those very non-human things: astronomical phenomena) and how they are mobilized and produced within the scientific discipline of astronomy. These images are both the starting and end points of the following analysis, as my research quickly taught me that we have “nothing to see when we do a freeze frame of scientific practice and focus on the visual itself instead of the movement, the passage, the transition from one form of image to another” (Latour, 1998:421, original emphasis). The astronomical image can only be illuminated by an investigation into its coming into being in techniques of visualization through which light is gradually mobilised and transformed. And, just as light is translated, deconstructed and constructed through these networks, so is the category and practice of the visual and visible. As such, I propose to study the visual culture of astronomy via the material culture of light, and I approach visualisation as primarily a technical process which, in the hard sciences, is geared towards the labour of reference. Inspired by Bruno Latour(1993a)’s call for a ‘symmetrical anthropology’, my analysis will delve into both human and ‘non-human’ vision and, following Mitchell, it will give equal weight to the role and category of the visible, as well as the “invisible, the unseen, the unseeable” (2002:170) in forming astronomical images and informing astronomy’s visual culture. In an effort to contextualize both the astronomical image and how I approach it, I begin by locating the image within different disciplinary projects (Chapter 1). I investigate the relationship between images and academic disciplines, firstly in terms of how they are studied in
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