glue-ing together the Universe--Invited Talk at \"Vis in Practice\" Session of IEEE Viz 2018

Presentation Date: Monday, October 22, 2018. Location: IEEE Viz 2018, Berlin, Germany. Abstract: Astronomers have a long history of visualization. Going back only as far as Galileo, discoveries were made using sketches of celestial objects moving over time. Today, Astronomy inquiries can, and often do, make use of petabytes of data at once. Huge surveys are analyzed statistically to understand tiny fluctuations that hint at the fundamental nature of the Universe, and myriad data sets, from telescopes across the globe and in space are brought together to solve problems ranging from the nature of black holes to the structure of the Milky Way to the origins of planets like Earth. In this talk, I will summarize the state of partnerships between astronomical, physical, and computational approaches to gleaning insight from combinations of scientific and information visualization in Astrophysics. In particular, I will discuss how the “glue” linked-view visualization environment (glueviz.org), developed originally to facilitate high-dimensional data exploration in Astronomy and Medicine, can be extended to many other fields of data-driven inquiry. In addition, I will explain how the current open-source, plug & play, approach to software facilitates the combination of powerful programs and projects such as glue, WorldWide Telescope, ESASky, and the Zooniverse Citizen Science platform. Throughout the talk, I will emphasize the commonalities amongst many fields of science that rely on high-dimensional data. Scientists do not draw distinctions between “scientific visualizations” that show literal spatial dimensions, and “information visualizations” that characterize non-spatial and/or statistical aspects of data. My goal will be to leave Vis attendees with an appreciation of the powerful discovery opportunities offered to scientists when visualization types developed by the InfoVis, SciVis, and VAST communities can be connected in the kind of flexible, linked-view high-dimensional visualization environment offered by glue.