Best Jobs In Science: NASA Concept Illustrators Turn Raw Data Into Art

We talked to the Spitzer Space Telescope's visualization team about the challenges and rewards of rendering the mission's reams of non-visual data into something that catches the public eye. Plus: a gallery of their all-time favorite works

In a shared office on the southern edge of Caltech’s campus, Robert Hurt and Tim Pyle are making art out of science. Armed with the industry standards–Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects–it’s their job to break down the Spitzer Space Telescope’s complex scientific data into visualizations that are accessible and meaningful to the average viewer. But their artistic challenge is unique: Human eyes have never seen the objects they are creating.
Spitzer’s infrared instruments return reams of data to Earth as the orbiting observatory gathers light from far reaches of the universe, light that is invisible to the naked eye. Imaging instruments capture some visual data that specialized software can cobble together into composite images, but often Spitzer’s most interesting discoveries come from regions of space too distant or obscure for the imagers to capture. In those cases, all they have is the spectral data; numbers and line graphs denoting wavelengths of light far outside the visual spectrum. Only a trained spectroscopist could look at that data and see the larger story it tells.
That’s where Hurt and Pyle come in. Dr. Hurt is the Spitzer Science Center’s visualization scientist. Along with animator and graphic artist Tim Pyle, it’s his job to convert the cascading numbers and EKG-li...