Episode 02: Space Image Processing with Jason Major

Written By Emily Olsen

Do you ever wonder how space and art combine to transform raw, sometimes noisy images captured by spacecraft into beautiful, clean images for us to see here on Earth? In this episode, Emily Olsen and Alexa Erdogan discuss space image processing with Jason Major, space exploration and astronomy outreach enthusiast. Jason explains how he interprets data files from various missions to make the beautiful images of celestial bodies often seen in media and online.

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Music credit: “Space” by Music_Unlimited

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Show Notes:

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Transcript:

*intro music* (“Space” by Music Unlimited)

Emily:

Welcome to the Art Astra Podcast, where we explore the intersections of the arts and space studies. Today we have a super exciting guest on the pod with us. We have Jason Major. Jason is a space exploration and astronomy outreach enthusiast and a NASA image processor. Our listeners may have seen some of the images he's processed in the media or online. Jason, welcome to the podcast!

Jason Major:

Thanks! Thanks, Emily. Nice to be here.

Emily:

So, we have a couple questions to get started. First of all, we know that you've been in the field for over a decade now. Would you tell us how you got into image processing or what resources you used to learn?

Jason:

Sure, of course. I started as a - I've been a graphic designer since I graduated college in the 90's. I started using some of the first iterations of Photoshop and Illustrator and other Adobe programs there - and really got into how easy it was to do image processing digitally. I also did some photography work and things like that, but you know basically I started getting into my first main job was doing graphic design. And - which was mostly because, you know, you can get a job in graphic design, whereas my studio art degree was a little tougher with that. So I went right into commercial art, so that way I could actually get a job and pay bills and rent and things like that…

Emily and Alexa:

[laughter]

Jason

…that you have to do.Then in, I would say the late - I don't know how you refer to them now - the late early 2000s?

Emily and Alexa:

[laughter]

Jason

Yeah, right before the 10's, but after the aughts. I started seeing more and more websites that were based on a lot of the space exploration missions that NASA had going on - NASA, ESA, you know, some of the other space agencies and they were putting their images from these missions online. And I mean I was really mesmerized by it. I've always liked space ever since I was a little kid. I've always liked science fiction. Of course I knew how to do various things digitally with art. So, seeing that you could get a hold of some of these image files and actually do some work on them yourself because it's all public domain stuff – I thought that was really, really cool.

With a beginning blog, I started just sharing a lot of these pictures that I found online when initially it was right in their, you know, their original published format. But then I started realizing, “hey, you know, I can improve some of these. I can actually work on them.” And that's OK because it's all public domain imagery. Just give some credit. Tell people where it came from, and you can share it out there. And people really, really liked it because there wasn't a lot of independent people out there at the time doing this. So this is going back to, you know, 2008, 2009, I'd say? It's just grown from there.

And as I went along, I learned how to do things better. I learned how to get my color better. I learned how to find the better version of image data that's out there, where to find raw image data. And then I could start from the best and then make something that's better than some - like a browser JPEG, you know, rather than just right clicking and saving something, I could download the stuff that was available directly from the spacecraft or wherever they were storing them. So that was kind of like a whole paradigm shift for me, knowing that I could get the best version of the data and work from there.

I know that's a long version of the whole thing but, you know, it was an organic growth for me. I didn't go to school specifically for that. I learned most of my image editing on my own. So a lot of it was just things that I was interested in, and as I went forward and put my presence online, and shared this information. You know, Twitter was new at the time. I was using a blog platform that doesn't even exist anymore…

Alexa

[laughs]

Jason

…I think it was called Vox at the time, and it was kind of like a livejournal. And they kind of went back and forth and then, you know, a lot of people from livejournal, which I had never used, went over to Vox. And that's where I first first started sharing some space imagery.

But then I made my own website, my own blog, and started sharing it there. And then people started seeing what I was doing and putting it on social media. And I started actually getting some work gigs and sharing some of my images and was doing some writing on websites like Universe Today. And at the time Discovery had a really nice space blog. They don't anymore, but they had a really nice space blog at the time. It was kind of like Space.com. I even did a couple things for Space.com, NationalGeographic.com, and then I started to get into actually talking about some of these images on TV for some Discovery shows so.... It… it was really an organic growth for me and I took whatever opportunity rolled along. So if someone said, hey, would you come and talk to us about this or explain this? I'm like, “Yeah, sure, I think it'll be great,” which is what– exactly what I'm doing here, so.

Alexa

Yeah.

Jason

Was it 15 years later? You know, from 2009. So yeah, where does the time go?

Alexa

Yeah. And it's interesting, too, with… I think we're all people of hobbies that we end up latching on to and then just developing and really researching. It's interesting like when you get into the thick of it, let's say like 15 years later, you look back and the path seems so clear. But at the time, going back to yourself 15 years ago, you were just kind of navigating things, trying things out. And who would have thought all along you would end up what you're doing now and what you're doing today?

Jason

Exactly. If I would give anybody any advice, it would be two key things. If you love doing something, keep doing it, even if you feel like you're doing it for nobody, because you're doing it for yourself and you'd be surprised how many people are actually seeing what you're doing. They may not say anything. But people do appreciate people's work who are passionate about what they're doing. And leave the door open for opportunity because stuff does roll along sometimes and you can be really pleasantly surprised as to what might come your way if and when you're really talented at what you're doing.

Alexa

Mhm, I love that. Especially do it for yourself, because that's as important as doing it for other people, maybe even more so.

Jason

Oh. Yeah, when I started off there was a lot of times I thought that I was just kind of like throwing these ideas and pictures and stuff into the void and nobody cared. But people did care, and they were enjoying it. A lot of it depended on the platform. Early Twitter helped me out a lot and early NASA Twitter helped me out a lot because there was a time when NASA was a real early adopter for social media. You might have been surprised to expect from a government agency. They said, “You know what? This is going to be important.” And they were right. And they jumped on it, and they put a lot of their stuff online. And they actually really embraced their fans at the time on Twitter. I think they're a little more hesitant now, a little safer now. But at the time they were, they were scooping people together. They actually were. They were holding these events. NASA socials, they used to call them “tweet-ups.”

Emily

Yes! Astrotweeps!

Alexa

Yeah!

Jason

You know that Astro tweeps, you know, and I signed up for a couple of those and I actually got a chance to go see the first, well, my first social was the last space shuttle launch STS 135…

Emily

Wow

Alexa

So cool

Jason

…so I got a chance to go down to Kennedy Space Center with, I think it was 150 total, and go watch that event with the rest of the world's reporters. And news organizations were all going there at the same time, so the place was mobbed. And NASA's Twitter fans, The Astro Tweeps, had the best spot in the house that we had a tent set up right in front of the countdown clock to the point where some of the seasoned journalists were like, you know, how did you get down there, you know, how do you, you know, and that it, but it was because NASA really had a team that was dedicated to doing that social media outreach. And they loved their ambassadors, and that's what they saw us as. Each one of us was: an ambassador that was taking their news and spreading it out to our own little groups of followers.

Alexa

Mhm.

Jason

They still do those, but at the time it was, it was really kind of something that was unusual.

Alexa

Mm-hmm. I think they had one for the PACE launch, but I mean, Emily and I were talking about them. Emily, you've been to NASA socials in the past, too, right?

Emily

I've been to two. I do really, really love them, but I was also surprised that essentially because I had been working in social media before I had attended one, and I thought it was so cool how they democratized access to the event itself with issuing press credentials through the NASA social program. And I know that there's one… There was one for Crew 8 that just closed a while ago and then there was also one for PACE. So they're still definitely doing them. They were closed of course during COVID, but I think they reopened recently.

Jason

Right. You know, I can tack that on there: a third thing for anybody that's interested in space. And I mean, you don't even have to be interested in making art or about space or whatever, although that does help. It is just to try to attend a social. They're really cool. They take good care of you. They bring you places where, you know, typically you otherwise would not be able to get into. You're seeing where they build these things. You're seeing where they're building rockets. We visited United Launch Alliance. We visited Spacex's headquarters over there. In fact, I think one of the– if it wasn't the first one, it was the second one I went to–we saw the launch control room for SpaceX. And this is going back to when they were just just starting off with their Dragon Capsule and…and we all get a chance to, like, sit in Elon's seat, you know. He wasn't at the level that he's at now with owning everything and stuff. He was a maverick rocket guy at the time, so it was… it was really cool.

Emily

That's so cool.

Alexa

Yeah, I would love to go one day. That's a dream: to go to a NASA social.

Jason

Do it!

Emily

Yes.

Jason

Sign up, do it and find a way to get down there. It is … try to go to at least one. In fact, if you've never seen a rocket launch, try to see one in person. It's it's…it echoes in your memory. You know, for the rest of your life, it's really interesting. I could still hear the sounds of, you know, the shuttle taking off. It was so unique.

Alexa

That’s so cool.

Emily

It's on my bucket list for sure.

Alexa

Yeah, absolutely. And going to these kinds of socials, you know, you get to meet people who are not just like, deep in the STEM industries or like space. But people who like sit in intersections between space and art like yourself, for example. And you know you were mentioning a little bit earlier about some of the things that you learned along the way while you were researching these tools and learning how to do all of this image processing yourself. Could you talk a little bit more about the process as it is now for image processing for any type of space images and like what it's evolved to now?

Jason

Well, I still do a lot of the…what I call my typical pipeline workflow where sometimes I'm just thinking to myself, “I need to make something cool today.” In fact, that's, you know, one of my little mottos is to try to make something cool every day. You know, sometimes I'm lazy. The older I get, the lazier I get. I'll look through what I've done before. I'll search for dates. You know, like, what happened on April 2nd and what do I have in my files? And then I'll share. That be like, “Hey, 10 years ago today, Cassini got this picture from Saturn,” and I've done it before and I've posted it before, but I'll post it again because 1) there's always somebody who just started following me. So, you know, it might be new to them. And 2) it's still relevant. It's just a year later. And sometimes I'll look at things that I did 5,6,7 years ago and I'll - before I put it up I'll say, you know what I can fix this and I'll bring it back into Photoshop and I'll fix things. Sometimes if I'm like, you know what, I really screwed this up - I'll go back and find the original data that I started with and and redownload it and just remake it. It's just the start of the process, so I say OK, well, you know, once I'm finished with this - it's still relevant - I'll save a new version out and then, you know, then a year later I'll post that one up. You know, I've got edit three. So a lot of my workflow is really kind of shooting from the hip, you know? Just seeing what interests me that day.

I am also actively working with the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory over the past year. In fact, it's a little over a year now. And I'm doing some image processing on the Chandra X-ray Observatory team.

We get data from the X-ray Observatory. We combine it with observation data from other telescopes: Hubble, James Webb, some ground based observatories to show where the X-ray emissions are coming from in various things like black holes and supernova, planetary nebula, things like that. So that's more of a structured idea where, “OK, well, this is what we're gonna release this month. Help us out with it.” And I'll jump in there and do some help. It's more of a contract situation, but still it eventually makes it to an official NASA press release, goes into the NASA library of images for their telescopes. So that's a little more structured. But otherwise I'm just kind of like looking for things that are interesting. If it's new, I might jump on there and see if I can make my version of something, but one of my favorite things to do is go dig around for stuff that nobody's paying any attention to and say, “Oh yeah, that's cool. These images from James Webb are really neat. Everybody's looking at them, they're getting a lot of press right now. But hey, here's something from Apollo 12 that's actually super cool, as well." Just to keep people's horizons a little broadened and everybody's not parroting the same thing online.

Alexa

Mhm-mm. Yeah, I was looking at, actually, some of the stuff that was on your Flickr recently and the radar image of the Venus crater that you did the image processing for. I - I haven't, like, thought about Venus for so long?

Jason

There's a reason for that! It doesn't have any high profile service observation missions. NASA is not… NASA has kind of been like this [shrugs] for Venus for a while, you know.

Emily

[laughs]

Jason

I don't know why. It needs to get a champion, I'm guessing, and there are astronomers out there, and research planetary scientists who are trying to champion Venus. I see them working. But they'll come up with an idea…they'll make a proposal, it gets a nibble, aaaand then it ends up dropping off the table when they make a decadal survey or something like that. So it's a shame that we don't have more going on on Venus.

It's not a friendly place. It's not somewhere you can easily drop a lander or a rover. Those things aren't gonna last very long, but there haven't been any surface images since the Soviet program in the early '80s.

Alexa

Yeah…

Jason

We really should have a new suite of images and some interesting areas that can at least drive research, if not get people excited about our neighboring planet.

Alexa

Mhm.

Emily

Going off of that question too, and this is… I mean this is kind of a sad question because it's been in the news recently, but because of technical difficulties of Voyager and how we temporarily lost contact with Voyager… We were curious, too, when we were looking through your Flickr, and just when we were discussing image processing: do you have to research the specific types of instrumentation on these spacecraft, or are there specific quirks to instrumentation that you've noticed when you're working on it? Or that you have to account for, or something that you found interesting when investigating specific missions and their data?

Jason

Yeah, I mean, some missions are as far as a processing point of view, some missions' data is easier and more convenient to work with than others. And a lot of that has to do with the way the cameras are set up, or were set up. And like for example, Cassini's image data is really nice, it's clean. Even when the pictures didn't come out perfect, it's still a clean file, and it makes sense, and they're labeled well.

SETI has a really nice online server called Opus that all of the Cassini data’s in. And the same thing with the Voyager and Galileo. There's some Hubble stuff. It focuses on the outer planets, or really any planetary bodies with rings and their moons. So it doesn't have everything, but that's a lot of our solar system and that's a lot of what, say, Voyager and definitely Cassini has looked at. I'll search through there. But, you know, Cassini stuff is great.

Voyager's is a little trickier, for example, because the filters that its camera used don't directly line up with red, green and blue. You have to kind of, like, mess with them to get accurate color and it's not like there's directions there that say, “oh, hey, do this with these images and you'll get accurate color.” So a lot of times I'm cross referencing what other developers have done, what NASA has done. And NASA's historically not always been 100% correct. We saw that with the issue with Neptune and the blues of Neptune and how you know, at one point they were published and they were like electric blues that really aren't accurate.

You know, Neptune actually looks a lot more like Uranus in its coloration. Voyager data has all of these little dots in it. And those are all calibration marks. And they did that for a reason, you know, when they were building the spacecraft back in the 70's. It was kind of like the Apollo program. They wanted to have all of these little calibration marks in the images. So if they needed to measure something or align things, they could do that. But now we're using image processing software, like GIMP and Photoshop and other stuff like that, and they're in the way. So I gotta go in there and scrub them out, and it just - it makes more work.

So yeah, sometimes it's like, “Do I feel like working on a Voyager image today? Ohh, I don't know. I don't know if I feel like cleaning up that much noise in there. I'll go do something else.” So yeah, sometimes I have to be ready to process something - be ready to process a very noisy Galileo image of Io that I happen to find, but I'm going to have to get away with a lot of noise because the environment around Jupiter, especially, but even Saturn can get really noisy, especially during the long exposure. I'm gonna go in there, I'm gonna scrub all that type of stuff out. And that's processing. A lot of times, especially now for some reason, people have commented on what image processing means. A lot of it is just making it so that you can look at it and not be looking at a mess.

Emily

Mhm

Jason

If you were just to just grab a raw image and throw it out, try to publish that, well, that's not gonna impress anybody because you gotta go in there and you gotta dig around and get that object data, the image data, make it look like something. It's the same way as if you underexposed a picture on a film camera. You have to go and you have to fix it. Otherwise you might as well throw it away. But you can't go back and retake that picture because all of those things were one-offs.

Alexa

Mhm.

Jason

So that's, you know, that's what image processing is: you're trying to get the best result from sometimes not very good data. But it can be done, and that's what got me attracted to doing image processing, because I thought making something that's interesting and beautiful and attractive and artistic out of something that was inherently maybe not so much was really interesting.

Alexa

Mhm

Emily

That's so cool. It is really interesting to think about the interpretation that goes into just image making in general, but especially when you are working with the raw data and then the output are these beautiful images.

Jason

Right. I mean, I can pick what I'm going to work on on a given day and that's because it's a hobby, for the most part. What I do for the Chandra team, that's assigned. That's like, “OK here's what we're gonna work on. See, try to do a good job with this.” “OK, I'll do that.” But, when I'm going and looking for my own stuff, I'm picking it. But I don't get to go and choose what format that data is in and if I feel like a challenge that day. I'll be like, “Alright, I'm going to see if I can make this look like it's something worth presenting.” And again, that's the artist in me. That's the studio art background that I have. I want it to be presentable. It's something that I would consider to be art. And even then, it might not be perfect. A lot of people wouldn't have seen the original stuff. But I know that it's the best that this is going to look. And if it gets somebody excited or interested in trying to find out more or learn more. Hey, I did my job. That's what I want to evoke.

Alexa

Mhm.

Emily

That's the best way to look at it, because all of these images are so, so cool. I do have a follow up question to that. Is there something that you wish more people understood about image processing?

Jason

Well, one thing for certain is that using Photoshop does not make an image invalid, and I think that we’ve…we've come into a point where a lot of things are faked using Photoshop because people want to say something that's untrue. They want to use it as a mosaicing tool to make fun of somebody or to make a silly picture and that's all fine and Photoshop can do all those things. But at the same time it can also really save a picture that's not presentable. If you're a journalist, you're not supposed to go in and take a picture of a scene that's news and replace a whole bunch of stuff and move people out of the way. That's - that's not journalism, but this isn't journalism photography. It's not even science because a lot of the work that I do isn't used for science. It's presenting, It's presenting and showing.

Jason

It's like - It's almost like landscape photography. That's kind of how I see it. I'm doing landscape photography, but the landscapes aren't here on Earth, they're somewhere else. They’re somewhere else in our solar system. And if they remind you of somewhere on Earth, hey, great! Now it's relatable, which is another reason why I like planetary photography, because you can kind of really get a sense of the physicality of it. So when you're looking at the craters on Venus or the slab rocks that were lying out in front of the Venera spacecraft or a mesa on Mars, you kind of have a sense of like, “I can understand that” and then you know find out well, how big is it? Or how does sunlight hit it? Well, it's a little different on Mars, so all that type of stuff is secondary, but you want it to be– I want it to be– something that's presentable. So I will get rid of things physically, like noise. A lot of images have noise in them because space is a radioactive environment.

I call it noise. Obviously it's not about sound, it's crud that's on the pixels because they're on a camera that's flying around Jupiter, and that's a super hot radiation environment. So that's gonna basically ruin most cameras. But these cameras are specially made to survive out there. So that data that comes in, there's a lot of bits and pieces and bad pixels and all sorts of stuff. I remove that. That doesn't make it fake. That is just a presentability type issue, so. That's something that I think more people should understand is that Photoshop, which is what I use…

Emily

Mhm.

Jason

…is a really strong tool for being able to make an image presentable and not look like a sloppy mess.

Alexa

Mhm

Jason

Maybe some people might prefer the original unedited pictures. That's great, but I'd much rather show something that's clean. And at the same time, I mean, it's not like I'm in there, you know, circling and getting rid of, you know, alien cities and getting rid of that– Get rid of that spaceship…

Emily & Alexa

[laughter]

Alexa

Or adding them.

Jason

We don't. Nobody needs to see that, you know? “Here's an alien shadow.” We don't need that. None of that stuff is there. I've looked at so many space pictures, planetary pictures, moon pictures, and I've never seen anything that really, like, knocked me off my chair and said, “Oh my goodness, it's a…it's an alien coffee cup got left there.” I mean that stuff's not there but there's a lot of crud and noise and bad pixels, so I wipe those out. So yeah, image processing is not an inherently…I can't think of the word that I want to use. It's it's you're not… We're not faking the pictures where we're assembling them, because somebody has to assemble them. This stuff is like getting all the ingredients for a cake but you still don't have a cake. You know you've got the milk….

Emily

Hmm

Alexa

Mhm

Jason

…You’ve got the eggs. You got the flour, but that's not a cake. Somebody has to make that, and that's what I'm doing. I'm putting it all together in such a way that it's presentable. And it looks like it should. And that's why these spacecraft do that. The reason why these spacecraft do that is because they're inherently scientific tools, and each one of all those ingredients are important, too, to somebody. Some researcher needs just the eggs, because that's what they study and they want to run off and look, “OK what kind of ingredients are these?” Because that's important. They make sure everything is separate before they mash it all together. When you take a picture with your phone or a camera or something, you know, a digital camera or something like that, it does it for you because it knows that that's what you want. You want the end result. You don't want all the bits and pieces beforehand. They would never sell an iPhone camera if it gave you the raw image data because most people do not want that.

Alexa

Mhm

Jason

Does that help? *soft laugh*

Alexa

*laugh* So in a sense... Yeah, it sounds like image processing isn't...It’s not a deceptive act. It's an integrated act.

Jason

That's the word I was looking for! Deceptive. It's not. It's not inherently deceptive. It's inherently constructive, but it’s… it is. It's something that you're starting – you're starting with the real basic building blocks and then creating the end result.

It'd be like if you went and bought a Lego Kit and they gave it to you already assembled. Now, maybe that's what some people would love. They just want what's on the box and they want to go home and take it out and go “OK, done.” That's what you're getting when you take a picture with your typical point and click digital camera. But what's coming from spacecraft cameras, they're giving you all the blocks because they may need to be used in different ways by different scientists. And ultimately, that's what space missions are: they're scientific missions, so everything is as separate as possible. And if you wanna a natural true color image, well, here's the stuff to make that. That's what they give you. If they didn't do that, researchers would be upset. Public might be happy, but researchers would be upset.

Alexa

As you talk about it, too, it sounds very similar to like folks who work with a lot of data sets, especially like a lot of numerical data sets, and they do statistics on them, like people can very easily use statistics to make something deceptive, right? Like how people can use Photoshop to make something deceptive..

Jason

Oh sure.

Alexa

…But, you know, it's when people who are actually like working with data and analyzing it, not many people just want to look at Excel databases of numbers and data and things like that. It needs to be presented in a way that is both human-readable as well as like attractive.

Jason

Right

Alexa

You know it. I can get a nice database like an Excel spreadsheet that has a beautiful color coding and columns. But if the data hasn't been interpreted, then how am I supposed to work with this? What value is it going to give to me? And it kind of, it seems a little bit similar to image processing when you think of it that way.

Jason

Right. It really is similar. Before you get that really cool newsworthy CNN infographic, that data has to be processed so that way regular people can read it and understand it. And you know, note: now, did you leave something out? Well, yeah, you could. But that's the integrity of whoever's making it. And so that's why–That's why you need to have on one side, the integrity of the processor. And then you have the result of whatever is shown. So it can be really subjective, but I know that I always try to show things to be as realistic as possible. And sometimes, I mess up and I'll go back and I'll say, “Hey, you know, I did that one wrong. It actually looks like this. You know, I got my colors wrong. Sorry.” Again, I'm not doing it for science. So if the hex value of my coloration on Mars is a little off from the one that I shared last month. You know, mea culpa.

Alexa and Emily

[laughter]

Jason

It's OK, it's OK.

Alexa

The world's not gonna end. Mars is still there.

Jason

Yeah, yeah, you know, and again, I do try to be as accurate as I can, but I'm not using set-in-stone numeric values. The one thing I will never say that I am is a scientist. And then the other thing I'm never going to be and never have been is a programmer. I'm not a programmer. I’m not a coder. I do not work that way. I eyeball most of everything that I'm doing. To the point where you know, if I get a brand new monitor, a lot of times I'll go back and I'll go, “oh my goodness, I was way off, you know?” This monitor is really nice. And I could see all the mistakes that I made [laughing] at the last time. So, you know, and that's true story. When I had to upgrade my monitor, I realized I missed a lot of like little bad pixels and noise in images that I had been working on just because my old monitor wasn't as high resolution.

Alexa

Wow, that's interesting.

Jason

Whoops

Alexa

Yeah. I never thought about that. The hardware differences. I always have my display monitors in night mode, where it's like mostly like red lights, just because the blue light just hurts my eyes too much.

Jason

Mhm. That would mess me up because I wouldn't know what color I was doing.

Alexa

Yeah! I would forget to turn it off and I would do, like… I'd be doing some like infographic or something for like science communication back in the day. And then I'd be like, “OK, it looks great.” And then I would see it shared on someone else's screen, and I'd be like, “that's what it looks like? That is not… “ [laughs] Yeah, yeah.

Jason

Yep, whoops!

Alexa

Yeah [laughs]

Jason

I worked on a picture while sitting in a, you know, in a - in a Starbucks one time when the sunlight was coming in the window, and I was going like this the whole time [gestures squinting from the sunlight].

Alexa

[laughs]

Jason

And then I come home and I, you know, I look at it in my office here and I realize I was way off. There's all these streaking and lines in the background. I couldn't even see because I was, you know, I was doing it on my laptop. So, that type of stuff happens, and again it's - I'm not making anything apart from, yes, I'm doing some things for NASA at this point, and I try to make sure that those are as accurate as possible. And everything gets checked - all of that work gets checked. So thankfully, I'm not the one that has to check my own work there, but it's being looked at by the scientists and the researchers who actually did some of the observations. So, you know, if they're happy with it, I'm happy with it.

But most of the things that I'm putting up on my blog or social media or whatever, that's just for me and–and for people to enjoy, so… I wouldn't write a paper on any of it. [softly laughs]

Emily and Alexa

[laughter]

Emily

Do you have a favorite image of the ones that you've made, or perhaps that somebody else made that you wish you had?

Jason

I wish I made everybody's images. Every time I see something that somebody else made, I'm like, "Oh wow, that's great! It's really good. I'll - I'll never be that good", you know?

Alexa

[laughs]

Jason

So it's like, the imposter syndrome is - is always strong and always, always looming. But I think that some of my favorite images are things that I've done of Saturn. I love those just - I mean, Cassini's beautiful. It was a wonderful mission. The imaging team that they had came up with some really, really nice views and everything was planned beforehand. I don't know how they did that. So you know, I'll always give kudos to, uh, the imaging team that they had. But I think that some of my favorite ones were - [inhale and sigh]

There was a picture that I made that was a combination of Cassini data and Galileo data, and it showed Jupiter's Great Red Spot. Like big smack in the middle. And I think that was and that was a - a Galileo image - it was a combination of multiple Galileo images. It was originally black and white, but it was nice and high definition. I combined two of them to make a wide screen version of it. And it had right in the middle, it had the shadow of Europa, [it] was sitting kind of like off to the side, but overlapping the Great Red Spot. So I thought that was fascinating, but it was black and white, and Europa was nowhere to be seen.

So what I did was I got some image data from Galileo of Europa. They had it in - I think Galileo used orange, blue and violet or something like that. But anyway, I made a color composite of Europa, put it in scene just - and I - I tried to get it to the size that it actually would look - put it in scene, just off to where the shadow is being cast so it looked like it was there. And I got some Cassini data that it had gotten in December 2000 when it flew by Jupiter going to Saturn, and I got some really nice color data of Jupiter. And I enlarged the heck out of that and put it in there for the color. So the result of all this stuff - and then cleaned up a lot of noise because of course, Jupiter is a hot and noisy place - and the result of it was a really nice color image of Great Red Spot, Jupiter's clouds, Europa, and Europa's shadow sitting on the Great Red Spot. And I looked at that and I said wow, that's - that's super cool. I love it!

That's one of my favorite images that I worked on just because it was - and it's kind of imaginary just because Europa wasn't in scene. But I like to say that, oh, couple of minutes before, that's where Europa was. It would have been right here, and that shadow is - is really lined up to where it would be. So it's not a completely fabricated sci-fi view, it's just, you know, fixing up bad timing.

Alexa

I love that.

Emily

It's a great way to look at it, and I realize now - so we are a podcast, which of course is mostly audio -

Alexa

…oh, yeah

Emily

- but we'll be sharing these images from you and also on our social media feed so that our listeners would be able to see them, and link them in our show notes, as well. Cassini is by far my favorite mission. Cassini and New Horizons were two of my favorites, but I really loved one of the images you made of - I think it's called on the NASA blog, it's like "Jove McJupiter Face"?

Jason

Yep.

Alexa

[laughs]

Emily

But it's the - it looks like a face. And so we've got those, like, Van Gogh swirls of Jupiter that is so well known, and then just the face. And I look at that - I believe there was a meme -

Jason

Yeah.

Emily

- more recently that was shared about it, but it's so relatable some days. [laughs]

Jason

It got turned into a meme. I'm not sure of exactly how many people shared it before that happened, but it was a Juno image, and it wasn't even one of the better Juno images. Unfortunately… I love Juno. I think Juno is - is an amazing mission. I was at the launch for Juno. It launched a month or two after the STS 135, so I actually went, just went back and I - I needed to see another launch so bad. I had seen my first rocket launch and I needed this. I just. I went and I did it. I did another one, another NASA social and then Juno didn't get to Jupiter until like for another six years later or something, but. I love Juno. I hate working with Juno data.

Alexa

Oh?

Jason

And the reason being is that some people have written some really smart scripts to break up the Juno data. But Juno raw data comes in one image and it comes in all of these strips that are the red, green and blue filters. But it's all in one big raw file that's a long, you know, narrow strip. So you have to break it apart. And to get the complete red wavelength filter image, to get the complete green one, to get the complete blue one - I don't know how to do that, I'll be the first one to say what I don't know how to do. So people that do know how to break that up, they write Python scripts, they do, you know, they say OK, here's the data. It does it, and - because they wrote the script - and then they get it back and they have a beautiful picture. I use Photoshop and that's a blunt instrument as far as that type of stuff is concerned. So -

Alexa

Mhm.

Jason

I wish I could do better Juno data. That particular Jovy McJupiter face image was a preview browser JPEG that I just kind of like took, looked at it, flipped it upside down, changed the color a little bit, and said, "Hey look, looks like a face."

All

[laughter]

Jason

And that turned into one of my most famous pictures. So I was like, oh okay, I guess we're doing this, but -

Emily and Alexa

[laughter]

Jason

Oh! Oh well, you can't pick where your fame comes from. That is bestowed upon you. And uh - [laughs] - you just choose on how you deal with it.

Emily and Alexa

[laughter]

Alexa

So actually, I wanted to ask - for like one of those images, if you're doing like a composite image, how long does that usually take from start to finish for you to be like, "OK, I feel like this is as good as it's going to get," versus, for example, the Europa picture that you were talking about where you had a bunch of data you were working with and integrating together?

Jason

I work pretty quick so, and I don't have a very long attention span.

Alexa

[laughs] Relatable.

Jason

The combination of that… I can usually have a - what I consider to be a - publicly presentable image within an hour, sometimes less depending on how - you know, the condition of the data that I'm - that I'm working with. If it doesn't require a lot of alignment, it's not bad. For example, Cassini images tend to require more alignment. Let's say Cassini was grabbing some observations in multiple color wavelengths, visible light wavelengths: red, green, blue. It's beautiful. It has all the colors I need to make an image, but it's getting a picture of Saturn with a couple of moons. Very common scenario for Cassini. Well, at the time, Cassini was moving. And the moons were also moving. So the red wavelength filtered image is going to have a different positioning of the moons than the green and the blue. So when I try to go make a full color composite of that image, I'm going to have to do something to fix the color fringing that you're inherently gonna end up with because all of that stuff is moving. You're gonna align to something, but if you align to a moon, Saturn will appear to have shifted. If you align to Saturn, the moons will appear to have shifted and have like little color fringings around them. So then I have to break it up, make multiple different versions, and then bring them all back together and say this is a color version of this set of observations. So that can take a little longer depending on how, you know, what's going on in the background? Are there overlaying clouds? Are there overlaying rings? How much do you have to fix? And that's where the Photoshop use comes in. I try to show things that I consider to be, you know, not not just accurate, but also pretty. So I don't want to have these little stray green and red outlines on everything because stuff moved between color observations.

But -

Alexa

Mm-hmm.

Jason

- other things where if nothing moved. Let's say I'm working on a color view from one of the early Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit. OK, well, when that Rover took some pictures, it stayed in one spot, turned its head, took a picture, turned its head, took a picture - or didn't turn its head and - and it just took, you know, 1-2-3. Well, nothing's moving between those. Maybe, you know, maybe the pictures were 10 minutes apart, so the only thing that's moving is the shadows. I have had to fix instances where, you know, between the red, green and blue exposures, the shadows have actually moved across the Martian surface, so sometimes I'll fix that. But for the most part, everything's exactly where it needs to be between those frames, so that's a little quicker.

It really depends on what's in-frame. Anything that's like deep space stuff? If it's a picture of a Galaxy? Nothing's moved. The spacecraft was - if it was Hubble or something like that, the spacecraft stayed in one spot, took the observations. Everything can stack right on top of everything else. You're fine. You don't have to worry about anything sneaking around.

Alexa

Mm-hmm.

Jason

If something's out of place, it's probably - it's probably image noise and [you can] scrub that out.

Alexa

Mm-hmm.

Jason

That's what that comes down to. So you just, you learn to know what you're seeing and what to look for based on what was taking the pictures.

Alexa

That makes sense. Going back to what we were talking about earlier, the idiosyncrasies for different instrumentation - also, the spacecraft that is taking it also plays a part.

Jason

And you know, I like to think that I'm giving a little extra care on some of the images only because I look at everything. I don't feed it into a script. I don't feed it into a program and see what comes out the other end. I'm looking at the raw data - well, not - I shouldn't even say the raw data cause I'm not looking at zeros and ones, but I'm looking at the original image files and seeing how it looks to me and then I look at the next one and I look at the next one and I overlay them, but every step of the way I'm looking at it. I'm not just sharing what fell out of an app.

There are apps out there that will take your three color monochrome images and give you a color version. But there's an extra step there, along the way, which is try to apply an artistic eye to it, and that's what I like to think that I do.

Emily

I think you do wonderfully. I mean it's - it's so, so cool to see -

Jason

Thank you.

Emily

Of course! This has been so informative and definitely helpful in understanding just what goes into this image making process. Thank you so, so much for joining us. And as we wind down, where can our listeners find you online?

Jason

I have a blog called lightsinthedark.com. I haven't posted much on there recently, so shame on me, but there's a lot of stuff there historically going back to uhh - oh, when I started, in 2009. So I like to think there's some interesting stuff there. In fact, sometimes I dig through my own files just to see things that I forgot about. So I'm there. I'm on Flickr as lightsinthedark - all one word - and I'm on Instagram and Twitter/X as @JPMajor. Again, all one word. I'm on Threads now as JPMajor and even Bluesky as the same, although I've been getting limited responses back from there - been doing better on Threads than Blue Sky, which seems to be kind of a empty vacuum right now, you know. But I think, like anything, it has a chance to grow if people keep on it.

Emily

Absolutely. And we'll be sure to link all of your handles in our show notes, and we hope we can also maybe see you at a NASA social if we all end up -

Jason

Oh, that'd be great.

Emily

- going together in the future.

Jason

Yeah, I'm looking forward to going to another one. I have to uh - at this point, I want it to be the right mission. I want - I want to go to something that I'm, you know, excited about, and I would like it to be a planetary mission just because that's what's really interesting to me. Maybe when we get a craft out to Venus. We'll get a craft out to Venus for Alexa and um -

Emily and Alexa

[laughter]

Alexa

I'll be there!

Jason

Yeah! And that way, you know, you can say, "I was there!" when - when you see the images come down.

Alexa

Mm-hmm. Yeah, for sure. Thank you so much!

Emily

Thank you, Jason!

Jason

Sure thing!

Alexa

We could listen to you talk about image processing in space all day.

Jason

Oh, I could ramble on all day -

Alexa

[laughter]

Jason

- obviously, but yeah, thank you so much. I really enjoyed it.

Alexa

Thank you, yeah!

Emily

Thanks!

--

Emily

That's all we have for this episode.

Alexa

If you enjoyed this episode, feel free to follow us on your podcast platform of choice and leave a review while you're there. We're also on socials @artastrapodcast. Show notes and transcriptions for each episode are always available on our website at artastra.space. Thanks for listening!

Emily

Thanks for listening!

*outro music* (“Space” by Music_Unlimited)

Emily Olsen
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