Join Derrick Pitts for a conversation with Carter Emmert, head of astrovisualization at the American Museum of Natural History, to learn all about how data visualization can help us to see our universe in whole new ways!

Links for today's episode:

• Learn more about Carter Emmart and his work at the American Museum of Natural History
• Explore the data visualization work being done by Carter's colleagues at Linköping University in Sweden
• Learn more about OpenSpace, the open source data visualization of space Carter is working on
• Dig around in Google Earth equipped with your new understanding of data visualization technology!

Hi, I'm Derrick Pitts and this is the Curious Cosmos.

Suppose you had a dream about a mystical place or event.

You had an idea of what it's like.

You know it, but you can't really describe the detail as you saw it in your dream.

Believe it or not, This is how things often feel for astrophysicists, where

you understand concepts and theories about the universe -and I mean really

know and understand - but these phenomena are happening so far away that you can

never witness it or visit there yourself.

But it's only now, thanks to advancements in data technology, that we have the

ability to actually see what these mystical places in our universe

look like, up close and in person.

My guest today has been leading the development of this technology,

and as amazing as this is for scientists, you yourself can go

experience this in planetariums.

As director of astrovisualization at the American Museum of Natural

History, carter Emmart directs their groundbreaking space shows and heads up.

Software development of an interactive 3D atlas called the Digital Universe.

In 2006, Carter received a PhD in astrovisualization from

Linköping University in Sweden.

In 2016, he received the prestigious Technology and Innovation Award from

the International Planetarium Society.

But here's the icing on the cake.

For 10 years, he was Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin's design illustrator.

How about that for an assignment?

Carter, thanks a lot for joining me today.

Good to see you!

It's good to see you too!

Today's planetariums have far greater capability than the

planetariums we grew up in.

Describe for us what the Digital Universe 3-D Atlas is, how it works

in planetariums, and what makes it all different from the standard

concepts of what people think the planetarium experience is like.

Well, first of all, I want to thank you,

Derrick, for having me on today.

This interesting concept that I think, even 20 years after we sort of

launched it here, is still something that takes a bit of explanation.

Of course, the planetarium has been, since its modern conception - modern

being, going back to the 1920s, so we're talking about a hundred years

ago, that the German company Zeiss developed a projection capability to

represent the sky very accurately, which was a data visualization.

What he's referring to here is that big machine in the center of the

planetarium that projects all the stars.

They did a very accurate star map.

360, but of course what we see, the ground is in our way, so

they have the dome of our heads.

And Fels was the first one in the U.

S., I think, of this technology.

Number two.

First was Adler in Chicago, which opened in 1930, and then

Fels in Philadelphia in 1934.

So before the Hayden in New York, around the turn of the millennium,

a concept had come up to create a digital system as sort of a millennium project

renovation of the Hayden Planetarium, going from the venerable old Hayden

Planetarium to the Rose Center for Earth and Space, to really run it with

the latest of graphics technology.

And arguably, we were not the first to have that done, but the convergence of

the industry at that time through various vendors was to fill the planetarium

dome with multiple video projection, to have high resolution display.

But what would be the content?

And so, what the conception of the project was, when I started in 1998,

so 25 years ago now, was to bring in all the data sets that we had of

astronomical objects that have distance.

When you hear the term data sets, just think

about collections of data.

Collections of information about any object, any event, or process.

And the reason why he's really interested in distance is because distance is that

third dimension that then makes it 3D.

So if you have only two...

You can only see them on a flat plane.

If you have the third dimension of distance, now you can actually

go out to that location by traveling out to that third point.

And so, with distance, we can then hang the

star properly out there in space.

And if you do it all correctly, you come back to Earth and you see the

night sky like we see it from here.

Think about, like, the constellation Orion.

You have stars that are at different distances, and what we see from

Earth, we have apparent brightness, or apparent magnitude, we call it.

But then you have, like, the true brightness of the star

hanging out there in space.

And so we atlased, basically, these set of catalogs that had distances.

Why were we doing this?

And it was really to be able to then leave the Earth and move about through

this three dimensional representation that the computer could do.

And I think that's where we went from...

the planetarium in the past, we would see the starry night sky very accurately.

But you couldn't move, say, to, uh, you know, the star Betelgeuse and see

what the sky looked like from there.

That was the call to action, and really what we wanted to do was

create productions with this as a foundation so that we could go anywhere.

And looking back from this perspective of 25 years in the future from like when

I started, that's now easy essentially.

Technology is there for digital cinema.

And so we now produce movies that, again, have this foundation

in this atlas that we have.

But I wanted to make a point about why we started working with Linköping

University and what we do now.

This university in Sweden, it's about two hours south of Stockholm, was founded in

the late 60s as part of Saab Aerospace.

And in fact, they, they had a spare airplane hanger and they turned it

into a classroom and figured that if the university part didn't work

out, they could return it back to the assembly line for airplanes.

But it worked out quite well and their high performance computing

facility ended up in a nearby mill town where they had a nice cool

running river, as you have in Sweden, could help chill the computers there.

And so right next to the rivers are high performance computing.

But they were excelling in data visualization research.

So, not just things like the astronomical realm, which we were

doing in the planetarium, but my colleague there, Anders Ynnerman, is

the professor and lead on this project to actually create a dome like ours.

And so they came to us and said, "well, you're doing this data visualization."

They do all sorts of things, including the scanning of the

mummies from the British Museum.

And so you put the mummy in a CAT scan, and you don't even have to unwrap it.

You're doing a three dimensional visualization, and you can fade away

all the wrapping, and then you can see the tissue, the bone, even the jewelry

that they're wearing, things like this.

And in their facility, they actually use stereo as well,

so you wear stereo glasses.

Just think of it like a VR headset, with

two images close to your eyes.

And you're immersed, and you're looking in 3D.

And so now we're into a totally different world in the

planetarium, because not only do we have the distance component added,

but we can also look at anything that we can sort of, look at in this way.

They like to say that we can walk out and

really explore these realms now.

You know, the general public is not familiar with

visualization, data visualization, scientific data visualization,

presented in a planetarium theater.

So describe for us, Carter, one of the flights, quote unquote, that

you've made of some data our audience would be really familiar with.

Well, that's very interesting because I find

that the Earth is something that, you know, we're used to.

Google Earth was arguably the first to sort of do this multi

resolution, globe browsing system.

In other words, I can come up and look at my backyard from the latest, you know,

satellite picture or something like this.

But it also renders the landscape, because for the mapping from the satellite images,

we also have another data layer, which gives the elevation, and that elevation

can be portrayed or modeled in 3D.

So that you could, say, fly down into the Grand Canyon.

You could fly over your favorite mountain range.

And you could do that, of course, not only for Earth, but we can fly off and look at

the other planets where we have data for.

So, the moon is a perfect example - we have some tremendous data - moon and Mars.

A place like Venus is interesting, because Venus has opaque clouds, we can't

see through them with visible light, but we can see through them quite well

with an imaging radar system, and so the Magellan spacecraft mapped Venus.

So we can portray that and so we can go from a murky atmosphere,

which is what it looks like, you know, if we were orbiting it.

But then we can reveal with radar eyes, essentially, the surface.

So, we can use these different data concepts and different data layers.

We can portray on the three dimensional terrain of these different

worlds and really explore them.

And in the Planetarium Dome...

The, uh, concept that the administration didn't want to liken their brand

new facility when we rebuilt it as a "flight simulator", because it's

a planetarium, so we didn't want to confuse the public, but very much

it's almost like a flight simulator!

It's data immersion.

So if I fly you down the Valles Marineris on Mars,

Valles Marineris translates out to...

Mariner Valley.

It's actually an enormous canyon on Mars, very much like the Grand Canyon here

in the United States, but a little bit different because Valles Marineris is

the biggest canyon in the solar system.

In fact, Valles Marineris would stretch from the east coast of the

United States All the way to the West coast of the United States.

It is enormous and it's miles and miles and miles deep.

What you're looking at is an authentic data representation.

We can exaggerate elevation to make it more extreme, where perhaps it's

very flat, but we tend not to do that.

We like to show what it would actually look like if you were there.

Well, wait, so does that mean you could actually take an

audience on a tour or a visit, if you will, to places on the moon and on Mars?

Both moon and Mars, we can see down below one meter resolution.

So we're talking about something about the size of a soccer ball,

which allows us to really portray, like what we left on the moon.

We can see our rovers on Mars, you know, we can see the tracks they leave.

And then when you get down on the surface, say, like with the

Mars rovers, we can reconstruct.

Thanks to the process at NASA, of course, our taxpayer dollars have paid for this.

So NASA is a tremendous archive of all these missions, including analysis

from the stereo imaging from the Mars rovers of the rocks in front of them.

So we can actually bring that in.

And then we're looking at things that are, you know, as small as

the imagers were able to see.

So once again, it's this idea of using data visualization to actually

travel to real places in the universe and see the layout of it.

And also we tend to do this more in our productions, but carefully choreographed

simulations or observations of process.

And so that we can explore the behaviors of the universe as well.

What is it like for an audience to actually be

seeing this as you're moving along from, you know, point to point?

So, they will see, effectively, in the case of like

the rover, what the rover saw.

This is definitely a different way of approaching an

experience for people in astronomy because we're now, in a sense,

visiting a location almost directly.

Do you see this as having an effect on the educational experience

for audiences in the Planetarium?

I would say, as an informal science education environment

as a museum is, in other words, it's not a classroom, it's representing to

you all these fantastical things like dinosaur bones, or this experience in

the Planetarium, is that, hopefully, It makes sense of things that you may

have been learning in the classroom.

And then you're suddenly, in a way, I'm now in the universe and I can

gain these different perspectives to really sort of see how the pieces

fit together or how they behave.

So, that is what's really new in this sort of immersive theater

aspect of being in these realms.

And the astronauts have commented when they have come in to see what we show

is they say "that's kind of the closest to being there since we were there."

It's a great compliment, but it's thanks to our satellite imagery that

we can then use and map and explore, and if we come up to a detailed

model of say the International Space Station, you are recreating the

view of the earth as imaged with its atmosphere, the veil of the atmosphere.

And for those of us who will probably never fly in space, I like to think

that this experience democratizes it and sort of gets it out there

so that we can all kind of see what the astronauts visibly see in their

work going into low Earth orbit.

I mean, this is a tremendous way to make use of

these datasets that are available.

Do you think science visualization has the power to solve problems or

answer big questions in science?

It definitely aids in the ability to see it in a

perspective you hadn't seen before.

I guess the best way I can answer this is sort of testimonials of scientists

that say that this ability, and actually in the planetarium, we're extending some

of these capabilities now to actually string together open source tools.

Open source tools, meaning computer programs that allow almost anyone

to work in them to create new components or parts of that computer software.

So it's as if I build a shell and then I invite others to add

things to it, making the product even greater than it was before.

I'm wearing this shirt that says Open Space, and

that's our current software.

It's NASA supported.

So it's this interactive data exploration tool of the real universe.

If you're interested, it's openspaceproject.com ,and you

can download this, and you need a sort of good graphics card.

But we're beginning to link these analysis tools that astronomers

use, and then we can bring that data straight into the dome and examine it.

The scientists say that they gain insight by looking at how these

things are laid out and by having a conference of peers to all be looking

at that together, immersed together.

And so that's an exciting aspect of where we're going with this.

As a visualizer, I like to start off with the notion that

we're not showing the scientists anything new, this is their data.

But generally when they're immersed in it, they had never seen it

that way on their small screen.

I'd like to say that the planetarium now, as a visualization immersive environment,

allows us to be a place in the museum where we can walk into the diorama.

The dioramas have been a mainstay of the museum world now for a few generations,

and they depict a location in nature that's extraordinary with actual taxidermy

and samples and the trees and then there's an elaborate painted backdrop.

But where that's a three dimensional window box, with data visualization, we

actually take you into these environments.

And I think whether it's a mummy or whether it's our galaxy or in

fact the layout of the universe, the data can be different, but the

experience is one of exploring.

And then of course you need an explainer.

You need a tour guide, essentially, to sort of help you through it and

say, "Well, this part of the moon is interesting because of this and that."

So it's a synergy of explanation and exploring.

So what's the most unique or unusual application you've seen?

Oh, that's a very interesting question.

OpenSpace has been built in this collaboration between Linköping

University and the American Museum of Natural History.

Uh, with our NASA funding, we now have partners at the University of

Utah Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute and New York University's

Tandon School of Engineering.

So, with this, I was in Sweden looking at the different range of things

that they're visualizing, the mummies and scans of specimens in amber.

So we're kind of looking at ancient insects, things

like this have been scanned.

That's pretty amazing.

But I think one of the most amazing things I saw was air traffic control.

And they're studying this for the European Union.

So you've got the 3D glasses on, but you're seeing the trails of all these

planes, and you can see the corridors of where the planes are going and

all that, but it was actually pretty frightening when you think of managing

that traffic, and was it in fact easier when it was just sort of a radar plot?

And it was scary to look at like that.

So maybe that's an instance in which those people who are very good

at playing video games, this might be an industry in which they can excel!

Yeah, we're also visualizing with NASA Goddard.

There's a team there that does space weather monitoring.

And what's all that about?

These are things that are innately invisible.

I mean, we see the sun.

We can see that with, obviously our eyes!

Important reminder, never.

Look directly at the sun.

Never look directly at the sun.

Did I say never look directly at the sun?

I meant to say never look directly at the sun.

Unless you have the proper solar observing filters.

Otherwise, never look directly at the sun.

We can look at it in different wavelengths

and things like this.

We see solar flares.

We see sunspots and so forth.

And then of course we have the Aurora Borealis on earth and like,

how are these things connected?

And then you get into things called plasma physics and magnetic

fields and all this exotic stuff.

But if we could visualize it, we can see the connections, and that's

a very rewarding area because we're visualizing this process of how the

earth's magnetic field interacts by being immersed in the sun's magnetic field.

It's called the heliosphere.

It extends across all the planets.

And of course we're just this tiny little ball.

It takes about 110 earths to make the diameter of the sun.

And watching the behavior of it actually, because there's this

aspect of our magnetic field and the sun's magnetic field would can be

chaotic locally, especially during solar flares, things like this.

But to see these behaviors, I really felt that for the first time I understood

it by seeing it and being able to play with it, whereas before I didn't get it.

But then the visualization actually helped, at least me, get it.

There's various aspects here, which is, one is I'm immersed

and I'm taking you places.

And the other is to actually see behaviors and how things work, whether it's air

traffic control or, or how magnetic fields and plasma works, and how that

affects the upper atmosphere of Earth creating the curtains of the aurora.

So, I would just say that the field of visualization, and thus the planetarium

these days, is open to as wide a topic area as that of science itself.

Wow, that's amazing.

I think the thing that you said that really carries that point is if we can

visualize it, we can see connections.

And so much of the work that is done in science is about connections.

Context.

That's right.

Context and being able to see this stuff.

But then you also said that planetariums now become these places where you can

actually, you know, delve into this.

You mentioned that this has been around for about 20 years now.

You've been working on it for 25 years.

How widely is this new program being used?

And do you see it beginning to expand?

Are there places or industries or disciplines where there's

much greater use of this?

Well, it's interesting within the planetarium field.

When we began the idea of pulling the atlases together, the

projection system was the first to be achieved technologically.

And so we had this capability to then use data visualization in the dome.

So in the modern planetarium now, it's like this atlas of the universe, the

digital universe that we pulled together at the American Museum of Natural

History, is used by some of the major companies that are out there that supply

this to planetariums around the world.

When we got the NASA funding for the OpenSpace software, the key

to that was having a network of planetariums across this country.

This is NASA money, so it has to be spent within the U.

S.

We wanted to develop this software so that others, other institutions, can use it and

help guide what it is that we're doing.

So it's, it's very much a group effort.

And because it's free, smaller planetariums that may use a fisheye

projection - there's another way to fill a planetarium dome using a nicely

front surfaced hemispherical reflector, you might see them as like a security

device, you know, in a stores on it.

But you can use that to actually fill a dome with a single projection.

And so economically, if the software is available and we have means for smaller

domes, portable domes, classrooms, things like this, that might want to show some

of this stuff is that it's out there.

So here's my last question for you, Carter, on this.

It's going to go back to the way we open this discussion about.

This new technology that emerged in the 1920s that is still with

us that has done so much to introduce people to the night sky.

I mean, if we ever wanted to sit and think about the number of people that

have sat under a dome to learn about, you know, the Big Dipper and to learn

about Orion, that number is enormous.

And people remember that experience of...

you know, being carried along through the universe by a presenter

that captures their imagination and tells them a story about going out

there and understanding about that.

How does this technology now, this capability, how does that change

the planetarium experience for the museum visitor that comes to the

planetarium looking for something that is of that same type of experience,

but maybe is more reflective of future capabilities of some kind?

I mean, we're all used to having big screen TVs at home, and high resolution

and all this other sort of stuff.

But OpenSpace and data visualization have a much greater capability, a very much

different dimension that can be brought.

How can that change the planetarium experience?

Well, that's a really good question, Derrick.

And what I would say is that data visualization, because we're using data,

and there's observed data where we go out and measure this in the world, there

is model data, and sometimes people feel that, "oh, it's just a model."

Well, the models are based, say, in physics, and also we're using this

intelligently now to bridge between gaps that we've actually measured.

Our models inform us.

And we're constantly checking the models against reality.

So, like, if you want to be certain about looking into the future, say with climate

modeling, you verify by paleoclimate.

You look at what the record was.

Can you predict the past from the conditions that you knew or had going in?

Then that gives you some sense of going forward.

The realms that we can visit with data visualization in scale and time,

go far beyond where we could send a camera, and then also to the degree

that we can depict places that may be hostile to go, like the Moon or Mars.

We can really show you what that looks like without having to actually be there.

So if we look at.

The time realm and the scale realm, we're never going to be able to

put ourselves out there to, you know, another galaxy and so on.

I mean, one of the nearest galaxies to us is Andromeda, and

we see it 2 million years in the past just because it's distance.

We can see that galaxy with our naked eye!

So it is in our common experience, but we still need that old style of

traditional planetarium to actually point out where Andromeda is.

So, all of that tradition of the planetarium is still valid.

And, uh, these star projectors are still wonderful tools to replicate

the night sky, as you mentioned.

But, the data visualization realm opens up corridors of exploration that perhaps

are unachievable by any other means.

People ask also about, you know, using goggles and having augmented reality,

but just even stereo virtual reality.

They say, "well, are you into that?"

And I'm like, well, I, I love that.

It's just that my headset has 400 seats!

It's just a bigger way of, of sort of doing it all together.

But those are the technological means.

But I, I really think that realm of time and scale, that is something where we'll

never be able to go that really our best ways of experiencing it or exploring it

as a group and having an authoritative subject matter expert, as we like to

call them in our realm, get up there and present and so that we assist them.

So the visualizers, we're assisting the experts, and

depicting that for the rest of us.

Carter, this has been great.

Thank you very much for taking the time to chat with me about this stuff.

Thanks for your work with this and you're gonna see me again sometime

real soon, because now that I have this capability in the planetarium,

I want to take advantage of it!

Well, we can't wait to help you out on that to whatever degree we can

and so again, thank you for having me on.

Thanks a lot, Carter.

Talk to you again soon.

Thanks again, Carter, for joining us on the podcast.

You know, as you listen to this, it may seem as if Carter comes off as being

somewhat nonchalant about this, but I want to emphasize how powerful this data

visualization technology actually is.

Data visualization takes what would normally just look like a bunch of

numbers, or maybe some graphs, or something like that, and turns it

into images that people can see.

Now, this isn't just for astronomy, it can be used across any science

discipline at all to provide new insights.

So the next time you visit your local planetarium, ask about their

visualization capability, or if they're planning on incorporating

data visualization as part of their toolkit for looking at the universe.

Now for me, someone who spent so much of my career working in planetariums,

I'm really excited about this.

Why?

Because it gives us all new ways to see the universe.

It also gives us new things to see in the universe, and ultimately,

a new universe to discover.

As always, thanks for listening!

We'll see you next time on the Curious Cosmos.

This podcast is made in partnership with RADIOKISMET, Philadelphia's

premier podcast production studio.

This podcast is produced by Amy Carson, the Franklin Institute's Director of

Digital Editorial is Joy Montefusco, and Erin Armstrong runs Marketing,

Communications, and Digital Media.

Head of Operations is Christopher Plant, our Mix Engineer is Justin Berger.

And I'm Derrick Pitts, Chief Astronomer and Director of the Fels

Planetarium at the Franklin Institute, and your host for this podcast.

Thanks so much for listening.