Saturday, February 19, 2005
The art history of hubble pictures
Hubble's raw images are carefully processed to produce the stunning colour representations that appear on the front pages of newspapers.
Elizabeth Kessler says the scientists who do this often make choices that suggest geological features on Earth.
She presented her ideas at a major science conference in Washington DC.
"The aesthetic choices made result in a sense of majesty and wonder about nature and how spectacular it can be, just as the paintings of the American West did," argued Ms Kessler.
"The Hubble images are part of the romantic landscape tradition. They fit that popular, familiar model of what the natural world should look like."
Of course the original article has pretty pictures (here).
