Ozone Visualization Comparison

This ozone hole animation was created for the panel session 'Astrophysics or Astro-graphics' at the workshop 'Communicating Astronomy to the Public' on October 2, 2003. The purpose of the animation was to illustrate two different ways that a visualization might be structured based on the amount of time the viewer had to look at it. The animation on the left fully illustrated the data, imperfections and all, under the assumption that a presenter would have time to explain the animation in detail. The animation on the right had all the data 'imperfections' removed by interpolation, under the assumption that the viewer would only have 20 or 30 seconds to look at it (on the evening news, for example) with only the briefest of explanations. The problem was that, without explanation, a layman might interpret the region of missing data in the movie on the left to be the ozone hole, instead of the central blue region. The point was that the truth of a visualization lies in the mind of the beholder, not in the absolute content of the imagery.