Aesthetics and Digital Image Processing: Representational Craft in Contemporary Astronomy

This paper examines whether ‘aesthetic’ considerations play a part in contemporary scientific work, and focuses on a scientific field undergoing rapid transformation through the introduction of digital imaging and image processing technologies. Interviews with astronomers at two image processing laboratories indicate that they orient explicitly to the ‘aesthetic’ judgments of their audiences when preparing images to promote and popularize their research. Although they acknowledge no such ‘aesthetic’ pretensions for their ‘scientific’ work, further analysis shows that a more ancient aesthetic, that of perfecting nature through a crafting of resemblances, is deeply a part of routine image processing work.