Our next esteemed speaker will be Zolt Levay who will give his talk on the topic “Visualizing Hubble’s Colorful Universe”
on Saturday, April 30, 2022, 20:30 Philippine Standard Time (12:30 UTC).
Zolt Levay is a retired Principal Science Visuals Developer in the Office of Public Outreach at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STSci) in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. He produced images and other visuals from data provided by the Hubble Space Telescope to publicize science results from Hubble and other observatories.
He continued this effort in planning for the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope. He also led the Hubble Heritage Team, an STScI project that showcased the visually finest images from Hubble
His work has resulted in some of Hubble’s — and astronomy’s — most iconic images, including the “Bubble Nebula” (NGC 7635), the Carina Nebula mosaic, and the return to the Eagle Nebula’s “Pillars of Creation” in 2015, as well as the Hubble Deep Field.
Zolt became interested in astronomy and photography at an early age and earned a bachelor’s degree in astrophysics at Indiana University, Bloomington, and a master’s degree in astronomy at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. He worked with several space science missions at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, before joining the Space Telescope Science Institute in 1983.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has been exploring the cosmos for more than 30 years. In that time, it has revolutionized astronomy and has enabled us to reimagine the universe through a wealth of dramatic views of space in unprecedented detail. Zolt Levay will discuss what makes Hubble such a powerful instrument, describe some of the most significant science results and spectacular images, and show how its science data can be translated into colorful pictures. He will explore what has made these images so compelling yet not so different from photographs of dramatic Earthbound landscapes, showing us that nature extends to the most distant reaches of the universe.
Link to his lecture can be viewed at Astronomical League of the Philippines – Official You Tube channel