Revealing Incomplete Data through Scientific Visualizations in an Immersive Dome Experience

Missing and sparse data and the associated uncertainty are inevitable in science, and their accurate portrayal in media is essential for upholding scientific transparency and credibility. Yet, in an era of conflicting information and deceptive sources, revealing uncertainty can be seen as unfavorable, in particular for science engagement media. Our study focused on conveying incomplete data on Venus's upper atmosphere to an adolescent audience using a scientific visualization designed for a planetarium's dome. Through a comparative study of visualizations with an unprocessed versus a processed dataset, we found that translating data into a Voronoi diagram can make the concept of sparse data understandable and aesthetically pleasing to a broader audience, yet it can come at costs of lower perceived details and accuracy. Additional results hint that participant's preference for visualization can differ from their perceptions of clarity and that neither the preference nor the clarity appears to be linked to participants' science literacy. Finally, we discuss the potential to design immersive science media experiences in planetariums and dome settings.