It was, however, in the period between her PhD and starting at Manitoba that she first got to work on public outreach images. She had a couple years working at NASA, co-ordinating their Hubble Heritage Project. It was strenuous work that saw Jayanne and her team release images to the public every month. Jayanne herself worked directly with the scientists, who had to be assured that their data were being represented correctly, while also fielding calls from the media, handling press releases, and building websites.
“What was that time at NASA like?” I ask. Jayanne pauses. “People usually want the ‘astronaut’ answer,” she replies. That is, people like to picture a close-knit team of scientific heroes working in unison to make the impossible happen. But while Jayanne is clear about her gratitude to have been at the swirling centre of such a hub of science, she admits it was a struggle. She pins it on a cultural difference between her collaborative Canadian background the more competitive US context.
In addition, it was a time when visualising data for public communication was new. Not everyone saw the value of the project. As abstract as their traditional contour plots were, many of the scientists “thought everything was already clear, as long as they presented a legend.” There was a tendency for the scientists to want a lot of control over the image production process, Jayanne reflects.