We spent this past week at a meeting about astronomy visualization and how it can be used to show people the wonders of astronomy and astrophysics. It was a cool meeting and I really enjoyed interacting with other folks in the science, research, planetarium, and filmmaking “bizzes.”

So, what’s astronomy visualization (or, as we started calling it, “astroviz”)? Simple. It’s the process of showing images of astronomical processes and events. The images can be from actual data or photographs, or be simulations BASED on actual data or photographs. To give you an idea of the range of astroviz there is, check out this picture recently released by the Space Telescope Science Institute.

It’s a single image of a dying star called V838 Monocerotis. There have been others taken of this same star as it processes through its death throes. In fact, they’ve all been combined into another kind of astroviz “product”, a sort of video animation, as you can see here.

There are many kinds of visualizations, and the ones that hold my current interest are those that I can use in my planetarium shows. For example, Frank Summers at the STScI created a beautiful moving video of the large-scale structure of the universe that is known as the “Cosmic Zoom.”

You can see a small Quicktime of the work HERE.

I’m always on the lookout for cool visualizations like this that can be used in the dome to immerse audiences in the cosmos. So, for me, the meeting was a great way to meet some folks who make astrovizzes and show them how I was using their work. It was also extremely cool to meet other folks in other fields who have an interest in using the same types of vizzes for their work. Very cross-pollinating and at several levels, easily one of the most useful meetings I’ve attended in a while!