Presenter:

Zolt Levay
Photographer, Hubble Space Telescope

Visualizing Hubble’s Colorful Universe

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has been exploring the cosmos for nearly 30 years. In that time, it has revolutionized astronomy with numerous groundbreaking discoveries, but Hubble has also enabled us to reimagine our perception of the universe through a wealth of spectacular, dramatic views of space in unprecedented detail. On Sept. 2, join Zolt Levay, a photographer involved with several space missions at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, as he describes some of the most powerful images in Hubble’s gallery and how science data can be translated into colorful pictures.

Zolt Levay has been pursuing astronomy and photography throughout his career. As far back as high school, he was observing the sky and taking photographs through a home-built telescope and processing photographs in a home darkroom. Levay earned a degree in astronomy and worked with several space science missions at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. For over 35 years, he was professionally involved with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope mission at the Space Telescope Science Institute. For most of that time, he was responsible for translating science data into images and graphics that illustrate Hubble’s discoveries for the public and balancing science content with aesthetics. 

He produced some of the most remarkable, profound, and widely distributed Hubble images and has described this work in public talks, magazine articles, books, and documentaries. Levay has also pursued a wide range of photographic interests, exhibited in galleries, and won awards in photography competitions. Currently, he is working on personal photography projects including seeking out dark, clear skies to explore the relationships between landscapes, the night sky, and the cosmos.