Eyes Wide Shut: Picturing Outer Space

Atop a high tow­er, as far as pos­si­ble from Earth, there sits a human being who has altered his eyes through gigan­tic opti­cal aids in such a way that they are capa­ble of pen­e­trat­ing out­er space as far as the most dis­tant stars. In its envi­ron­ment, suns and plan­ets cir­cle at a solemn pace. Even swift-foot­ed light takes mil­lions of years to pen­e­trate this envi­ron­ment space. And yet this whole envi­ron­ment is only a tiny excerpt from Nature, tai­lored to the capac­i­ties of the human subject.

Jakob von Uexküll, A For­ay into the Worlds of Ani­mals and Humans, 1934.¹

Chile, and in par­tic­u­lar the Ata­ca­ma Desert’s region, has been repeat­ed­ly labeled astronomy’s par­adise.² Accord­ing to a recent sur­vey, Chile cur­rent­ly hosts 42% of the world’s astro­nom­i­cal obser­va­to­ries while by 2018 it will be home to 70% of world­wide astron­o­my infra­struc­ture, or, fol­low­ing a dif­fer­ent esti­mate, Chile will engen­der half of the world’s astro­nom­i­cal images by 2025. Chile’s attrac­tive­ness to astronomers is main­ly jus­ti­fied by its extra­or­di­nary and extreme geog­ra­phy. The Ata­ca­ma Desert, which cov­ers about 128,000 square kilo­me­tres (49,000 sq. mi) of Chile’s ter­ri­to­ry, is the dri­est and pos­si­bly the old­est desert on earth, hav­ing expe­ri­enced hyper­arid­i­ty for 3 mil­lion years. The aver­age rain­fall in the Ata­ca­ma is 15 mil­lime­tres per year. How­ev­er, some of the weath­er sta­tions locat­ed in the area have nev­er reg­is­tered rain, and skies are clear 300 days per year. Sit­u­at­ed at the west of the Andes Moun­tains, the desert reach­es unusu­al alti­tudes and doesn’t suf­fer from major dust storms. More­over, the very wide­ly spaced set­tle­ments in the region guar­an­tee almost inex­is­tent light pol­lu­tion and radio inter­fer­ence. Such extreme arid­i­ty and min­i­mal pol­lu­tion of course cre­ate ide­al con­di­tions for astro­nom­i­cal obser­va­tions, and the inter­na­tion­al sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty has heav­i­ly invest­ed in the Ata­ca­ma Desert, espe­cial­ly since the 1990s when, with the return to democ­ra­cy and the sta­bi­liza­tion of the polit­i­cal cli­mate, Chile emerged as one of the most secure and flour­ish­ing states in South Amer­i­ca.³

In the words of a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Euro­pean South­ern Obser­va­to­ry (ESO, a 15-nation inter­gov­ern­men­tal research fed­er­a­tion), eco­nom­i­cal and polit­i­cal sta­bil­i­ty are essen­tial to the long time, sig­nif­i­cant invest­ments required to install the new gen­er­a­tion of gigan­tic astro­nom­i­cal obser­va­to­ries. In a 2011 inter­view, ESO’s spokesman focused on three exist­ing or pro­ject­ed schemes locat­ed in the Ata­ca­ma Desert: the Very Large Tele­scope (VLT), ful­ly oper­a­tional since 2000; the Euro­pean Extreme­ly Large Tele­scope (E‑ELT), on which con­struc­tion began in June 2014; and the Ata­ca­ma Large Millimeter/​submillimeter Array (ALMA), now in an advanced phase of devel­op­ment. The con­struc­tion of ALMA, the world’s largest com­plex of radio tele­scopes, which has been work­ing at full poten­tial since 2013 (even if the last of the anten­na did not arrive until June 2014), required the com­bined forces of Euro­pean, North Amer­i­can and East Asian sci­en­tif­ic insti­tu­tions togeth­er with the coop­er­a­tion of the Repub­lic of Chile.⁴

ALMA sits at 5,000 metres over the sea, on a vast plateau of the Chilean Andes. The com­plex is ser­viced and manned by engi­neers, tech­ni­cians, dri­vers, mechan­ics and con­trollers in charge of assur­ing the smooth flow and pro­cess­ing of astound­ing amounts of data. An astronomer may sit in the research sta­tion, in spaces in which oxy­gen is reg­u­lar­ly pumped to sup­ple­ment the scarci­ty at high alti­tude. But most often astronomers will sit far away, in remote coun­tries, in front of com­put­er screens tran­scrib­ing and inter­pret­ing infor­ma­tion trans­mit­ted by the gigan­tic ​“hear­ing” aids that com­pose ALMA. Sounds are actu­al­ly reg­is­tered by the six­ty-six dish-shaped 12-meter and 7‑meter anten­nas slow­ly turn­ing around in syn­chron­ic move­ment in an eerie mechan­i­cal bal­let, but astronomers would sel­dom ​“lis­ten” to the sig­nals received from far away stars and galax­ies. Astronomers would rather look at the strings of num­bers dig­i­tized by the sen­si­tive receivers that ampli­fy the radio sig­nals col­lect­ed by the anten­na dish­es. Astronomers would then, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with engi­neers and artists, trans­form, enhance, fil­ter and manip­u­late data which extreme­ly pow­er­ful com­put­ers and appo­site pro­grams have already screened and altered. The final results will be mes­mer­iz­ing images and ani­mat­ed ren­der­ings of cos­mic objects and process­es unbe­liev­ably beyond human perception.

ALMA has a res­o­lu­tion 10 times big­ger than the leg­endary Hub­ble Space Tele­scope, launched into Earth orbit by NASA in 1990. Nev­er­the­less, it will be sur­passed by the Square Kilo­me­tre Array (SKA) pro­ject­ed to be com­plet­ed by 2024 between South Africa and Aus­tralia. Accord­ing to design, SKA will have 50 times the res­o­lu­tion of ALMA. Of course, much can be said about the severe con­di­tions imposed on humans and machines by the extreme envi­ron­ments in which these over­whelm­ing and expo­nen­tial­ly grow­ing obser­va­tion tech­nolo­gies are deployed, although even more aston­ish­ing is to reflect on how the data they col­lect are trans­lat­ed, inter­pret­ed, pre­sent­ed, and cir­cu­lat­ed. In fact, what such gigan­tic appa­ra­tus­es pro­duce are images, which are post­ed almost dai­ly on the web­site of each obser­va­to­ry, not to speak of innu­mer­able sci­en­tif­ic papers, reports, grant appli­ca­tions, research pro­pos­als, or works of vul­gar­iza­tion like pic­ture books and even calendars.

But what is the char­ac­ter of these images? Clear­ly they can­not be con­sid­ered faith­ful copies, mechan­i­cal repro­duc­tions, or ​“objec­tive” rep­re­sen­ta­tions of cos­mic objects and events so fun­da­men­tal­ly beyond the grasp of human per­cep­tion no mat­ter how tech­no­log­i­cal­ly enhanced. And look­ing at these images will require even more of an act of faith, like the one sug­gest­ed by Bruno Latour in his famous essay on iconophil­ia: ​“Iconophil­ia is respect not for the image itself but for the move­ment, the pas­sage, the tran­si­tion from one form of image to anoth­er. By con­trast, idol­a­try would be defined by atten­tion to the visu­al per se. Thus, icon­o­clasm may be defined either as what attacks idol­a­try or as what destroys iconophil­ia, two very dif­fer­ent goals. Because it seems so dif­fi­cult to resist the temp­ta­tion inher­ent in all images — that is, to freeze-frame them — the icon­o­clast dreams of an unmedi­at­ed access to truth, of a com­plete absence of images. But if we fol­low the path of iconophil­ia, we should, on the con­trary, pay even more respect to the series of trans­for­ma­tions for which each image is only a pro­vi­sion­al frame. In oth­er words, we should be iconophilic in all domains at once: in art, in sci­ence, and in reli­gion.”⁵

In the last sec­tion of a book that retraces the his­to­ry of the notion of ​“objec­tiv­i­ty” in sci­ence, epis­te­mol­o­gists Lor­raine Das­ton and Peter Gal­i­son define the most recent gen­er­a­tion of sci­en­tif­ic images as pre­sen­ta­tions rather than rep­re­sen­ta­tions. In their words, in the dig­i­tal sci­en­tif­ic atlases of today (includ­ing astro­nom­i­cal ones), images oper­ate as tools, rather than evi­dence, and are used to make and change things. Dig­i­tal images are, at least par­tial­ly, inter­ac­tive: they can be rotat­ed, cor­re­lat­ed, flied through, zoomed, coloured, and cut. Dig­i­tal images present (rather than rep­re­sent) in a triple sense: first, instead of por­tray­ing what already exists, they become ​“part of a com­ing-into-exis­tence”; sec­ond, images are ​“pro­duced to entice – sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly and entre­pre­neuri­al­ly,” to promise things that exist only in incom­plete or fic­tion­al form; and final­ly, lib­er­at­ed from the con­straint of mechan­i­cal objec­tiv­i­ty, they eas­i­ly merge with artis­tic pre­sen­ta­tion.⁶

Das­ton and Galison’s the­ses are revis­it­ed, expand­ed and refined by Eliz­a­beth Kessler in a recent painstak­ing analy­sis of the spec­tac­u­lar cos­mic images ​“fab­ri­cat­ed” with extreme­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies that manip­u­late and inter­pret data sent to Earth by the Hub­ble Space Tele­scope. Telling­ly titled Pic­tur­ing the Cos­mos: Hub­ble Space Tele­scope Images and the Astro­nom­i­cal Sub­lime, the study demon­strates how the com­pelling images reg­u­lar­ly cir­cu­lat­ed by the astro­nom­i­cal research insti­tu­tions con­trol­ling Hub­ble oper­ate as a ​“hybrid of sci­ence, art, and pub­lic rela­tions.” From frag­ment­ed sig­nals that need to be care­ful­ly sep­a­rat­ed from noise and black and white pic­tures of extreme­ly hazy and dis­tant celes­tial bod­ies, teams of engi­neers, artists, and astronomers pro­duce the most seduc­tive and col­or­ful images that, as Kessler con­vinc­ing­ly demon­strates, are uncan­ni­ly sim­i­lar in com­po­si­tion, palette selec­tion, and study in con­trasts to the cel­e­brat­ed ​“sub­lime” land­scape paint­ings of the Amer­i­can West real­ized dur­ing the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry by artists such Albert Bier­stadt and Thomas Moran.⁷ Astronomers often refer to these sorts of rep­re­sen­ta­tions as ​“pret­ty pic­tures”, a for­mu­la imply­ing a neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tion. Nev­er­the­less, they can­not deny the seduc­tive pow­ers of the images and the way they beau­ti­ful­ly func­tion not only inside the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty but also at large, on the lay pub­lic, who almost inevitably responds to them as to ​“true” depic­tions of the universe.

The pho­tographs pre­sent­ed here were tak­en by UMWELT (Schei­deg­ger & Gar­cia Par­tar­rieu) and Ger­ar­do Köster dur­ing a field­trip and work­shop orga­nized by the AA School (Lon­don) and titled Chile by Night. Direct­ed by Pedro Igna­cio Alon­so (School of Archi­tec­ture, Pon­ti­f­i­cia Uni­ver­si­dad Católi­ca de Chile, San­ti­a­go), the work­shop took place in Jan­u­ary 2013. Tutors and col­lab­o­ra­tors includ­ed Thomas Weaver (AA School, Lon­don), Pilar Cere­ce­da (geo­g­ra­ph­er, Pon­ti­f­i­cia Uni­ver­si­dad Católi­ca de Chile), Fran­cis­co Förster and Elise Ser­va­jean (astronomers, Uni­ver­si­dad de Chile, San­ti­a­go), Igna­cio Gar­cia Par­tar­rieu and Arturo Schei­deg­ger (UMWELT Archi­tects, San­ti­a­go de Chile), and Alessan­dra Ponte (School of Archi­tec­ture, Uni­ver­sité de Mon­tréal). Spe­cial thanks are due to Pedro Igna­cio Alon­so for gain­ing access to ALMA and to Fran­cis­co Förster and Elise Ser­va­jean for intro­duc­ing us to the com­plex­i­ties of astronomy’s extreme forms of imaging.