Data visualization in astrophysics

These are some images I made for my thesis in astrophysics. It was titled "Using Weak Gravitational Lensing to Find Dark Matter Distributions in Galaxy Clusters". I used Mathematica, Illustrator, and Omnigraffle to make these graphics.

Galaxy moments. The real and imaginary moments of galaxies that were distorted by dark matter through gravitational lensing.

The age of galaxies. The mass distribution of galaxies according to their age. The one on the left is for the youngest galaxies in the universe (this means it is very far away), seen through the Hubble Telescope. The one on the right is an older galaxy (this is closer to Earth).

Blur. The application of a blurring matrix on a galaxy matrix. The numbers are intensities, normalized from zero to one. This is a number application of the effect of blurring due to the telescope optics.

Pixelation. This is called the "bleeding" of the light from one pixel to the next in a CCD camera.

Distortion of light due to gravitational lensing. This shows the path of the wavelength as it approaches the observer.

Cartoid distortion. This is the third moment of the distortion caused by gravitational lensing on a circular galaxy.