Astronomy on Visual Cinnamon

The Radius Gap

Mon, 19 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Scientific American commissioned me to create a data visualization for an article exploring the “radius gap.” This is a puzzling absence of exoplanets within a specific size range, larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune. The goal was to illustrate this phenomenon in a way that was both scientifically accurate and visually compelling. Rather than relying on a traditional scatterplot, I aimed to design something more engaging while still making the data accessible to readers. The final visualization, inspired by sci-fi aesthetics, uses a polar plot with density contour lines to highlight the two distinct populations of exoplanets: Super-Earths and Sub-Neptunes. This approach not only made the radius gap apparent but also provided a striking, intuitive way to compare these distant worlds to our own solar system.

Imagine

Tue, 27 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

“Imagine” is a generative art collection of 222 pieces, created for Axiom Space to celebrate the launch of the Ax-2 mission. It showcases fictional star maps that transport viewers to worlds yet to be discovered. In the far future, as humans venture ever farther out into space, we will encounter new worlds and new skies. This collection offers a glimpse of what those skies might look like — each star map a vision of the universe as we have yet to see it. Each piece invites the viewer to engage their imagination and find objects, animals, and mythical heroes within the shapes and patterns of the unique constellations drawn between the stars.

Wanderings of Stars

Mon, 20 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The three pieces in this generative & data art collection reveal how the stars in our night sky are moving through the “lens” of how our current constellations are pulled apart as time is either moved 400,000 years into the past, the future, or both. These pieces place you as an outside viewer, looking at the night sky as a sphere with the stars and constellations drawn along the outside, and our Earth a theoretical speck in the center.

Gravitational Waves

Tue, 26 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

First discovered in 2015, LIGO and Virgo have since detected 50 gravitational wave events. These ripples through space time itself are caused by the violent collisions of black holes (and/or neutron stars) dating back billions of years. To celebrate the release of the 2nd catalog of mergers Science News asked me to create an interactive data visualization revealing each event together with a companion for their printed magazine. We wanted to make the interactive part more special than a static visual. The final visual includes sound bites for some mergers. Hovering over a merger starts a tiny (physics based) animation of the merger. Clicking on any merger shows a pop-up modal with a lot more detailed information, such as a map of the sky that shows the rough location of where the gravitational waves originated from.

Hubble's 30-year legacy

Wed, 15 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

In celebration of the Hubble Space Telescope’s 30-year anniversary in April 2020 I created two static visualizations for Physics Today, to be used in their series of articles on Hubble’s history. The main visual became a full poster that revealed more than 550,000 observations in a map of the sky, while highlighting some of the most famous observations and photos. The second visual was created as a companion piece outlining the different target classifications of Hubble’s observations. Originally only meant to appear online, the client was so enthusiastic about the main visual that it was adapted and published as a gate-fold in their April issue of the Physics Today magazine as well.

A sky map of the Hubble Space Telescope's observations

Wed, 08 Apr 2020 10:00:00 +0000

In celebration of the Hubble Space Telescope’s 30-year anniversary in April 2020 I created an extensive visualization, more of fully-fledged poster really, for Physics Today. Let me show you how the static visuals that I made still became one of the biggest projects I’ve ever worked on in terms of hours invested. I could’ve called this blog post “the impact of small design choices” because the main issue wasn’t necessarily what type of chart form to use. It was really how to display the datapoints (Hubble’s observations) in the chosen chart form (a map of the sky) to reveal both details and the bigger picture.

Visualizing the different astronomy targets that Hubble has observed

Wed, 08 Apr 2020 09:00:00 +0000

Besides a visualization that plotted Hubble’s observation on a map in the sky, I created another dataviz for Physics Today to celebrate the Hubble Space Telescope’s 30 year anniversary in April 2020. Revealing the types of astronomy targets that Hubble has been looking at. In this design blog I’ll take you through the design process that led to the final visual.

Figures in the Sky

Tue, 17 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

No matter where you are on Earth, we all look up to the same sky during the dark nights. You might see a different section of it depending on your exact location, time & season, nevertheless the stars have fascinated humans across time and continents. Our own creativity combined with stories about local legends and myths have created a diverse set of different constellations. And even though the stars don’t change, people have found many different shapes in the same sky. This interactive visual story looks into the differences & similarities between the constellations that 28 cultures, spread across time and across the World, have seen in the stars.