astro_jcm

astro_jcm, 2 months ago

@65dBnoise Hi! We didn't intentionally hide this –– in the caption of that image we also explicitly mention that these lines are overlaid to indicate the polarisation angle. Ditto in the zoom video, where we fade them in on top of the original image.

astro_jcm, 2 months ago

@65dBnoise Sorry, I forgot to mention that there's a short illustration of how this works in our 1 minute summary: https://www.eso.org/public/videos/eso2406abh/ The animation itself is from EHT + Crazybridge Studios, it's a very cool visualisation of how polarisation & magnetic field geometry are linked.

astro_jcm, 2 months ago

@65dBnoise No worries, no offence taken! Feedback is always very welcome, and polarisation images are always tricky. Let me clarify a few things (multi-post thread incoming):

The word "overlaid" is in the image caption: https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso2406a/

In image captions we always include all the relevant details: filters used, how they were mapped to different colours, any other visualisation techniques used, etc.

Maybe you meant the lede paragraph, but that's trickier... 1/n

astro_jcm, 2 months ago

@65dBnoise In the lede you only have a few seconds to convey the gist of the result, so squeezing in here all the technical details about how the images were made is impractical.

Also, very often this lede will appear detached from the main image, depending on who reproduces the release and how they do it. So the key thing here is how to convey the core finding in a couple of sentences, keeping things simple but not oversimplified. 2/n

astro_jcm, 2 months ago

@65dBnoise After this quick summary, we then slowly elaborate on the details more and more as the text progresses, adding additional layers of information.

That way if someone stops reading at any point (and many people will), they will leave with a simplified but roughly complete version of the story, rather than a detailed but incomplete story if we started differently, focusing on the technical aspects first. 3/n

astro_jcm, 2 months ago

@65dBnoise As for "this not how it looks", that is true of every astronomical image. When we combine images taken through different filters, the final image will never represent how an object actually looks. Either because some of the involved wavelengths are outside of the visible range, or we mapped adjacent wavelengths to very different colours to highlight differences in composition, etc.

Polarisation is not that different: ultimately we're trying to represent something invisible to us. 4/n

astro_jcm, 2 months ago

@65dBnoise We always include all this information in the image caption. But, as I said earlier, it's very impractical to include these details also in the opening paragraph, where you're trying to convey the gist of the story.

We only have a linear story flow to work with, so we have to choose what comes first. 5/n

astro_jcm, 2 months ago

@65dBnoise With polarisation, when we're dealing with black hole images I personally tend to prefer other ways of displaying this, but opinions differ.

Here we did try to convey the visualisation method wherever suitable. It may not have worked for everyone, and I fully accept that it didn't work for you. But it's 100% not true that we were intentionally deceptive, as you said.

6/6

astro_jcm, 2 months ago

@65dBnoise The same thing happens with polarisation: lightwaves from astronomical objects oscillate in different directions, and our detectors register that. This is also actual physical information, just like wavelength.

The question is how to properly represent this, and what "properly" means. Again, I'm not a fan of the line integral convolution method for certain applications. It does involve arbitrary choices, but so does mapping filters to wavelengths. 1/3

astro_jcm, 2 months ago

@davesdogmaggie Exactly how I feel! Let's see how this goes.

astro_jcm, 2 months ago

@Fu It's one of the four Auxiliary Telescopes at ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile: https://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/paranal-observatory/vlt/auxiliarytelescopes/

astro_jcm, 2 months ago

@spacelizard I love this kind of cutaway illustrations 🤩

astro_jcm, 2 months ago

@spacelizard @spacegeck I had a couple of courses on technical drawing in high school. In both we had to do everything by hand, which I loved as it did help me to fully assimilate many concepts. But I hated having to manually draw the typography, as my handwriting sucks and I'm utterly unable to write with nice, regular characters.

astro_jcm, 2 months ago

@icastico Agreed. They've covered the survival/discovery aspect in such an original and detailed way that if they do a second season they'd need to be careful in order not to feel repetitive while also staying on-brand. But I also like the fact that this felt pretty self-contained.

astro_jcm, 2 months ago

@sharponlooker @harriorrihar ¡Cierto! Le sigo por aquí, sus diseños son geniales.

astro_jcm, 2 months ago

@spacegeck It's been fascinating seeing this image take shape layer by layer. 🤩