Keywords: photos, images, Hubble Space Telescope, professional telescopes, photography, astronomy, cameras, data, photographer, astronomers, color, nature, wave lengths, light, objects, James Webb Space Telescope [Intro music] Skipper Chong Warson: Hi, my name is Skipper Chong Warson, and I'm a coach and design director in San Francisco, California. Welcome to the second season of How This Works. This is a show where I talk to people about topics in which they are experts. And today Zolt Levay talks to us about his work as a nature photographer, both out in space and our terrestrial world here on Earth. Thanks for making time to be here, Zolt. Zolt Levay: Oh, it's my pleasure Skipper, thanks for asking me. Skipper: Of course. So let's dig in. And specifically, let's start with pronouns. My pronouns are he and him -- how would you like to be referred to? Zolt: He and him. Skipper: Great. Let's talk more about you; let's start with you. Would you introduce yourself in a few sentences? Zolt: Sure, Zolt Levay. I've had passions for photography and astronomy for quite a while, ever since I was pretty young. Skipper: Okay. Zolt: So I got some education in astronomy, a formal education in astronomy. Skipper: Okay. Zolt: And went on with a career mainly with the Hubble Space Telescope mission and NASA's Hubble mission. Skipper: Okay. Zolt: And I produced a lot of images for the Hubble mission. Along the way, I've done a lot of photography, personal photography, and self-taught in photography. Still, I've been doing it for a long time, enjoy it quite a bit, and have explored things in various avenues of photography. You know, that's my -- what I do have a lot of interests, other passions, and family. I have a wife, two kids -- two grown kids. Skipper: So what's something that people might not guess about you from the surface? And from reading your biography? Is there something that comes to mind? Something, of course, that you would be comfortable sharing? Zolt: Well, one is that I wasn't born in this country, although I spent -- all except for four years of my life in this country. My background is my parents were from Hungary. Skipper: Okay. Zolt: Left during the Second World War. Those upheavals in Europe were devastating to many families, my family among them, and they ended up getting relocated to Pakistan of all places. And that's where I happen to be born. Skipper: Oh, that's interesting. Have you been back to either Hungary or Pakistan? Zolt: Not been back to Pakistan, although I'd like to, although this may not be the best time. Skipper: Right. Zolt: To visit that part of the world. Skipper: Sure. Zolt: I have been to Hungary one time. Very much. So interesting place, interesting country, you know, distinct in many ways, as most European countries are distinct in their own ways. I enjoyed it. I enjoy my very brief visit very much. I have one fairly close relative still alive in Hungary. Skipper: Okay. Did you, I wonder, when visiting Hungary, did you feel any connection some people talk about when they returned to -- and I realize that you weren't born there necessarily, but as a homeland of your parents -- is that someplace that you felt connected? Zolt: I did, actually. And, you know, I think it's a cultural thing you hear, you know, family stories, family descriptions of places of times, of cultural things. And yes, I did feel a very strong connection, actually. And I would very much like to go back. Skipper: Yeah. Zolt: Again, the politics get in the way of a lot. Politics in Hungary is rather interesting these days. But, yeah, I did feel a strong connection. Skipper: Okay. So let's jump into our subject. You know, what is the this of How This Works? I gave a little bit of it away in our introduction, but I'd like to hear you say it if you don't mind Zolt, what are some of the subjects we're going to talk about today that you know very well? Zolt: First and foremost is producing images, and particularly producing images, astronomical images, and especially the images from the Hubble Space Telescope, which are, you know, arguably among the best astronomy images that we have available now -- now until the James Webb Space Telescope, which sure equivalently wonderful and amazing. Skipper: Yeah. Zolt: So that's part of my expertise. And in the larger sense, photography/producing images are intimately connected. So I see it as a continuum -- photography -- whether it's standard photography that most people might be familiar with and then extending into producing images, astronomical images, is photography. And so that and also the concept that we're seeing in these photographs is nature, whether it's photographs of landscapes on Earth or places in the deep cosmos, it's all part of nature. And it's another continuum that we can experience, albeit with specialized instruments when we, if we have to, if we want to look at deep space objects, but -- Skipper: Yeah. Zolt: I still have a strong connection with the natural world and feel like it's important to, to study and appreciate. Skipper: That's a nice distinction, and yet sort of conglomeration you just brought up. And I'd like to get into more of that later how the photography that you worked on as a result of the data and all of the information that you received from the Hubble Space Telescope, it's still nature photography and still plays into the work that you do here on Earth as well. But before we get into that part of it, one thing that I want to ask Zolt is, how did you get started in this work? The Hubble began to produce images; what was it in? 1990? Zolt: Correct. Skipper: And when did you start working with the Hubble data and information? Zolt: Well, I was on the project since 1983. Skipper: I see. Zolt: Before that, since before launch, I wasn't working, and there was no data from the telescope. At that time, we were preparing for the launch, I was doing software development, I was a programmer. Skipper: Okay. Zolt: And we were working on some software for the users of the telescope, the astronomers, to use to analyze their data. Skipper: I see. Zolt: So I had some experience with the data with analyzing Hubble data. But I didn't really start working on the images until around the time of the servicing mission, which was in late 1993. Skipper: Okay. Zolt: They sent a shuttle mission to serve as a telescope to put in optics to correct the defect -- the defect was in the primary mirror and the telescope. Skipper: Okay. Zolt: And they were able to put in some additional optics to correct for that defect. And so, around that time, I joined the -- what was then called the news office. Skipper: Okay. Zolt: Which was established to disseminate the findings from telescope to the discoveries, science findings that were made through observations with telescope. And Hubble was producing observations since launch. Part of the reason for establishing that news office was to which was an extension of the NASA publicity department, specifically for Hubble was to get our message out that Hubble actually was doing valid science, worthwhile science, even though it had this fundamental flaw. Skipper: Right. Zolt: But then, around the time of the servicing mission, I joined that office. And partly because I was familiar with the data. And I was already at the institute, at the office, at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is the facility responsible for all the science operations for Hubble, planning the observations, archiving the data, making the data available to the scientists, all kinds of functions. This is independent of NASA. It's actually funded by NASA but it's operated by a consortium of universities that operates other observatories. So anyway, part of this institute is the public outreach office. And I joined that office, again because I had some experience with the data. And I had this photography experience, so I kind of knew the paradigms and the procedures for producing images from the telescope. Skipper: Gotcha. Zolt: Fortunately, I mean, I just sort of fell into it. You know, it's not like they say -- you know, I always kind of marvel at the fact that there was no career path for this. Really. Skipper: Yeah. Zolt: Just sort of developed. And I just happen to be in the right place at the right time, I guess. Skipper: You hinted at this a little bit in your introduction as well. But there's a reason why you are working with the data -- you have an academic background in this field; how and why did you start there? Zolt: It's kind of in the deep darkness of the past, but I feel like you know, ever since I was in, you know, say junior high school, high school I, I became into, I was -- I feel like, I was always interested in technical stuff, figuring out how stuff works, you know, taking things apart, making things tinkering with things. And I also just, you know, a couple of trips to the west, I saw really nice, dark skies, and I really kind of became, you know, off the night sky. And that kind of, I think, pushed me in the direction of astronomy, as opposed to maybe other directions like engineering or some other thing that I was interested in. Skipper: I say. Zolt: And so I just pursued this, you know, the, the academics -- it just always been kind of an interest. And I also feel like astronomy is, and always has been a visual science, it's always been based in the visual, maybe not so much today. It's more data driven, analytical, it's more analytical today. But certainly, the origins of astronomy are very visual, looking at the night sky, building instruments to improve our vision of the night sky. So -- and I was always interested in those things that interested in building telescopes and interested in photographing the night sky with my telescopes. And so it just all kind of work together, the photography, aspects of it, the science aspects of it. And it ended up that I wasn't quite so interested in the science, per se, and the analysis and the research. But I was always interested in the mechanics of it. And kind of the ideas that word romance in a sense, but there is some romance involved in it. So yeah, that's kind of -- not sure that explains it entirely. But that's the history. Skipper: Well, I think that gives a little bit of insight. It may not explain it 100%. But I think it gives us a little bit of a peek behind what you remember and what you have capitalized in that interest. I wonder, you also talked about having a family being married and having two grown kids? Is this a -- if I had to boil it down, I might summarize it as being led by curiosity. Is it something that's been a larger life philosophy for you both as a father, as a husband, as a human in the world? Zolt: Oh, absolutely. Curiosity and yeah, interest. Again, you know, tinkering with stuff, this physical, as well as mental things very much go together. So when you're planning something, to say, do some astrophotography. There's a lot of thinking, a lot of planning involved in that -- timing and working with mechanical stuff, the instruments. So it all kind of fits together. I'm maybe not as good at that in interpersonal stuff, as I am with with the instrumentation. Yeah, it's certainly, I feel like I have a lot of curiosity about a lot of things. Skipper: Sure. Well, let's get into some of the nitty gritty of the Hubble if you don't mind. And we didn't talk about this in our prep conversation. However, in digging in and learning a touch more, just so I can understand some of the bare bones of how the Hubble worked -- I didn’t realize this in all the years that I’ve ever heard about the Hubble, but the images that are produced from the telescope are in black and white. So when you look at some of the images and there are some really spectacular ones... I think there’s one, is it called Pillars of Creation? I think that’s one of the best-known of the images -- how do they end up in color? Zolt: Yeah, that was the bulk of my work... so yes, the cameras in the telescope, they work pretty much like cameras that most people are familiar with with the big exception is that they do not automatically produce color pictures. Skipper: Okay. Zolt: What people, a lot of people, may not realize is that all cameras today also actually operate by taking essentially three different pictures in three different colors. So the camera sensors have little filters on them -- basically, they're separate picture elements within the sensor that record either green light, blue light, or red light. Skipper: Mm-hm. Zolt: And then there are electronics in the camera, this is digital cameras; film cameras kind of work the same way, but totally different technology. But with a digital camera, there are electronics within the camera that then puts that information together as a color image. And in fact, that's very analogous to the way our eyes work, our eyes have separate sensors for red light, green light, blue light, and then our brain actually puts those together into what we perceive as a color image. Skipper: Mm-hm. Zolt: But on Hubble -- and all astronomical telescopes work this way, professional astronomical telescopes -- the cameras do not produce the color images. Skipper: Mm. Zolt: Astronomers are interested in the brightness of the light that's coming to us from space. And the objects produce light in a multitude of colors -- actually, most of which we cannot even perceive because it's outside the range of what our eyes can perceive in terms of color in terms of energy of light. Skipper: Okay. Zolt: But those cameras, the cameras include filters, which record a certain certain color of light color and is related to the energy of the light. So redder light is lower energy, blue light is higher energy. So what the astronomers are really interested in is picking apart those energies of the light. And understanding how those objects create these various energies or colors of light. And so the cameras will record a particular color or range of colors. And then, because of the nature of digital, the way we produce digital color in a digital environment, we can reproduce a color image from that data from that information. And that's what we do. So the telescope will take a picture in say red light, then same picture in green light, and the same picture in blue light. And we've got three separate images that can be displayed as a grayscale, monochrome image, black and white image. And then we can use just standard off-the-shelf software, like Photoshop, for example. And reconstruct a color image from that. Skipper: Okay. Zolt: All the tools are available in just this off-the-shelf software to do that process outside of a camera. So the cameras, you know, our cameras and our phones, cameras, separate cameras, all do that automatically. Skipper: Got it. Zolt: And with this data, we have to do it manually. Skipper: So the telescope, professional astronomical telescopes take pictures -- and I know Photoshop so that I can speak a little bit of this language. You can split images into different channels, depending on how you set the image up. Is it -- and I'm pulling, I'm calling back upon my university physics -- would it be accurate to say that these are the wavelengths of those colors, the red, green, blue, the RGB? Zolt: Yes, the wavelength is related to the color and related to the energy. Skipper: Okay. Zolt: Again, red light is lower energy and longer wavelength. Blue light is higher energy has shorter wavelength. So yes, astronomers will pick the type of light they want based on the wavelength. And so it's either a very specific wavelength, like light emitted by hydrogen, in these objects out in space produces light of a very specific red wavelength. Skipper: Okay. Zolt: Although on the other hand, an object like the sun produces light across the whole spectrum. So it's white light, composed of light of all the colors. Skipper: Got it. Zolt: Looks white to us, right, and sunlight is spread across the whole spectrum. Skipper: Then there's some amount of interpretation that you have to do as someone who's processing the images to say, this is the blue light, this is the green light, this is the red light. And this is how this image would look to our eyes if we were able to look at it. Zolt: Yes, there's a lot of object objective ways of producing it. And then there's some subjectivity in how you translate each individual image into a color channel. Skipper: Yeah. Zolt: And but it's not, it's not arbitrarily subjective. It's based on how those images relate to each other and what we think it ought to look like. So, for example, certain objects are maybe predominantly red because we know they're producing a lot of red light. Other objects may be predominantly blue because they're higher energy, we know they're producing a lot more blue light. So in the final image, we can kind of have an educated guess as to what that image should look like, even though there's no way our eyes can actually see that to have ground truth. Skipper: Sure. Zolt: Well, we've seen enough similar objects, that we kind of have an idea of what we would like them to look like or what we think they should look like. You know, it sounds kind of arbitrary, but it's actually less subjective than you might think. Skipper: Okay. Zolt: In a lot of cases, the image kind of just drops out of the data with a kind of a standard processing workflow. Other times, that's all different, depending on the filter, the selection of filters, and the type of object you're looking at. Skipper: Sure. Zolt: In that case, the images don't really look like what our eyes would perceive, given equal conditions. Skipper: Yeah. Zolt: Like if we could look through the telescope, for example. Skipper: Sure. Zolt: Because our eyes work very differently, the cameras are set up to work very differently from the way our eyes work. Skipper: Yeah. One other detail that I didn't know before I started researching, digging into a little bit more about how the Hubble worked, is exactly the power of this particular telescope, I read somewhere. And please correct me if this is not the right way to think about it -- but at any given time, one of the images that the Hubble could pull was as though you held up a pin to the night sky. And that would be the area in which the telescope could focus in on. Zolt: Yeah, it has to do with the field of view that it can see at any one time. And the usual analogy is a soda straw if you hold up a straw to your eye. Skipper: Okay Zolt: And the air, the part of the sky, you can see through that straw is roughly what Hubble's field of view is. So it would take, I believe it's 24 million of those fields to cover the whole sky. Skipper: Wow. Zolt: So if you had enough time with the telescope, you could cover the whole sky, but it would take me 24 million images to do that. Skipper: Wow. Zolt: And plus, the sensitivity. So our eyes, it's you know, so I don't know what the factor is, but at some millions of times more sensitive than our eyes, because our eyes have a pupil that's, you know, a fraction of an inch, but the telescope is 2.94 inches across. Skipper: Okay. Zolt: And that can collect much more light. Skipper: That is, I don't even know that I can fathom that. It's hard for me to grok. Zolt: It's hard to get your head around it. Skipper: Yeah. So to get back into the process of making the images, bringing them into color, and, you know, in a way that we can look at it as human beings, how much time did this take to work through these images? Zolt: It varies a lot, depending on the data can be it can be as little as an hour, can be as much as weeks. And, you know, it's it's post-processing. So -- Skipper: Yeah. Zolt: You know, you can spend an infinite amount of time working on something on an image that's technological, but there's also a creative aspect to it, like I mentioned, there's a subjective aspect to it. And then there are things like, there are artifacts, the cameras introduce things that really aren't there in the thing we're looking at, right? So you kind of want to take those out, just like you might want to take out a dust spot that's on the sensor of your camera, you know, you can take that out if you're putting making a picture to put on your wall, you know, so things like that, that takes some of that's pretty tedious. That takes a lot of time. Skipper: Right. Zolt: I wasn't the only one doing this. We had other, I worked with a team and small team. You know, people come and go and there's other people around the world doing this. There was a team in Europe doing this -- European Space Agency's equivalent of our NASA and they maybe not as big but they're a small office for doing Hubble outreach also. Skipper: Okay. Zolt: Other people are they're doing it, so I wasn't the only one by any means. But yeah, it varied a lot. And depending on how much extra post-processing effort you have to do, really. Skipper: I see. Zolt: And there's experience. So, you know, if you've never seen data like this, if you've never seen Hubble data, there's gotcha info in there, stuff that you just need to learn. And like with everything, you know, anything technological or complicated. Skipper: Did you have a particular image or maybe a series of images that seem to follow you around in that? I mean, we ended up having these what Herman Melville called, you know, Moby Dick, the white whale. So did you have a kind of like white whale image that you were like, Oh, I don't think this is quite right yet, or one of the ones that took like weeks or, you know, some extended period of time. Zolt: Yeah, there were certainly a few like that. And one that took a lot of time was something called the Carina Nebula Mosaic, this is a region of our Milky Way. So our Milky Way's galaxy and it's a lot of gas and dust and billions and billions of stars as Carl Sagan liked to say, from the area, it's only visible in the southern hemisphere. But Hubble can look anywhere in the sky. It's not limited by our location on Earth fortunately. It's a place called the Carina Nebula, the constellation Carina, very dynamic area of the Milky Way, stars are being formed out of this gas and dust. And so there was an observation, that was like 50 of these little sort of straw patches across the sky. Skipper: Okay. Zolt: You know, in a panoramic mosaic -- Skipper: Okay. Zolt: Across this just amazing region of space. The catch was that it was only in one of these wavelengths, it was only in the light of hydrogen. So it was a black and white image. Skipper: Okay. Zolt: But we put together this black and white image, nice, beautiful panorama. And then I sort of had a brainwave, that the same astronomer who proposed to take these photos, who observed this data, also used a telescope on the ground in Chile, to look at the same region of space -- Skipper: Okay. Zolt: But he did it in that case, he did it in three colors. Skipper: Okay. Zolt: So in the light of hydrogen, sulfur, and oxygen, which are three different wavelengths, that these places in space are emitting light, very strong, lots of light in these three colors. Skipper: Okay. Zolt: And so we also put together a color image. Now, the ground-based data is lower resolution because Hubble is above the atmosphere, it's got better resolution and doesn't have the atmosphere distorting the starlight. But, again, we're kind of because of a trick of the way digital images work, you can separate the brain has data from color information and an image. Skipper: Okay. Zolt: So we use the brightness information from the Hubble data, okay, and combine that with color information from the ground-based data. Skipper: Okay. Zolt: And, again, the way our eyes work, we were not so worried about the resolution and in the color that we see. But we are, our eyes are better at resolving the brightness information. So this works to our benefit in this case. So we put that together, we preserve all the resolution from the Hubble image, but we were able to add color to that from the ground base data. Skipper: Oh, wow. Zolt: So you know, and I wasn't sure if this is going to work at all. Turned out that it worked very well. Skipper: Okay. Zolt: I tried it with some other images. Subsequently, it didn't work as well. So it was very fortunate, this particular image worked very well. Skipper: So it was a -- Zolt: Just not the same as if you were to take all those color, different colors with Hubble, and we did something like that later. But that's, you know, but anyway, so because of all these reasons, because it took so much time, and it was a fascinating region of space. That's actually one of the favorite images that I was able to produce. I'm very gratified that it worked out the way it worked out. Skipper: So different astronomers, whoever was observing this part, they could order certain data to be captured? Zolt: Yes. Skipper: Okay. Zolt: So astronomers propose to use the telescope. Skipper: Okay. Zolt: They want to answer some question, right? What is this object we're looking at? What is it? How's it working? What's it doing? And so they write this very complicated proposal to use a telescope, because the telescope is very expensive to operate. It's in high demand. Lots of people want to use it. Skipper: Right. Zolt: In fact, it's oversubscribed by some factor of 10 or something every year. And then that proposal gets reviewed by other astronomers, people at the institute, science operations people, but also independent astronomers will review these proposals and figure out which ones are the best ones to do. Skipper: Right. Zolt: And yeah, so then they specify what objects are going to look at what instruments are going to use, what filters are going to use all the all the specifications about how to do that. And then the telescope goes off and does that they basically write a program that gets uploaded to the telescope, the telescope operates pretty much automatically sends the data back down. And then the astronomers get the data. Skipper: I think we could talk about the Hubble and your work there, and how it all works, I think we could just keep going on there. But I also want to switch gears a little bit, because that's not the only work that you've done. You've continued to work as a photographer. And we'll drop a link to this in the show notes. So people can can go to a directly. But can you talk a little bit about how your experience working on Hubble images has both been -- it's a give and take, because you were photographer before you started working on the Hubble images, and now you continue to be a photographer after having worked on the Hubble images -- how do those two philosophies and experiences inform each other? Zolt: Yeah, I think that's a good way of putting it there, they inform each other. So I certainly have used the experience, I gained doing photography to help produce the astronomical images. And so not just the mechanics of it, but also the more aesthetic parts of it. So studying a lot of photographs, looking at a lot of photographs, following certain photographers helped, it helps figure out how you adjust an image to make it say more powerful, or more interesting to look at. There are so many ways to adjust nowadays, especially than there were in the darkroom. But now it's a lot easier and a little more convenient, and a lot more avenues to make adjustments to an image. And so, I think that experience was very helpful in understanding what to look for in an image. What is it about this image that I can change to make it better, make it interesting? So, you know, one of the people I've met go to kind of typography, people as Ansel Adams, and he, not only took a lot of photographs, he's very famous in photography, but he taught photography, wrote books. And so I studied some of that and absorbed some of that. And I think that that helped a lot. And I think the other way, too, it's a little harder to kind of think about that, but I think the mechanics of you know how to pictures get put together, well, you know, your cameras doing, it's a lot different from one when you've got to go a few steps back in the process, and think about how these different color channels fit together. And so I think that can also inform the other side of photography than more aesthetic side. So yeah, it's certainly a give and take. Skipper: Yeah. Well, in your work on the Hubble images, you know, data played a crucial role in how those images were processed, right? You wanted to see which wavelengths played out where, in what concentrations. How does data play in the, in the nature photography that you're doing these days? Zolt: Yeah, it's not quite so direct. But I think it does, in a sense that you need to understand what your camera's doing, you need to understand, and this goes even back to film photography because it was so much less automated. In fact, and another, you know, I keep bringing up Ansel Adams, but he taught about using all the resources you have available -- all the control you have available to make the best possible final result. And so, in his case, he wanted to make the kind of negative that would produce the best print. So he had to understand how to expose and process that negative, not to make the best looking negative -- Skipper: Right. Zolt: But to make the best possible print. So you have to understand the process of producing the negative and the process of going from that negative to the print. And we have the same thing today with digital photography. We have raw images, the images are coming out of your camera and taking that raw image and producing a final product, whether it's going to a computer display, or going to a print. And so the more you understand about how that raw image is produced, the better you are because you can make a better raw image. So you want to expose, you want to use the proper exposure -- Skipper: Sure. Zolt: You're not over-exposing it or under-exposing it, you want the maximum amount of information in that, that raw image. So you can extract all that information and produce your final product. So it's the same process. But yes, certainly the more you know about how your camera works, the controls that you have available, and how to use those controls to produce your image, the better off you are. Skipper: When I first talked to you about your photography, I naturally broke it into two buckets. And I said, Well, there's your Hubble photography and then there's your nature photography. And one of the things that you pointed out to me was that, that it's all nature -- that when you're whether you're looking out into space, or you're looking at something in a park or your backyard, it's all the natural world. Can you talk a little bit more about that? And how, for you that this is an overarching philosophy or an overarching notion as how you see nature. Zolt: It sort of came to me not that long ago that I saw connections between images from Hubble images and the images I was producing -- mostly large, largely landscapes, and outdoor stuff. And it was kind of funny because I was seeing similarities in composition, and color. Skipper: Sure. Zolt: And even though the actual physical properties are vastly different, this distance scale that scales, physical scales of these things are, you know, you might be talking about miles in a landscape or as you're talking light years, the billions and trillions of miles in a space image. And yet -- Skipper: Sure. Zolt: These structures might be visually similar. And in some cases, there's some physical similarities, erosion processes and things like that -- Skipper: Sure. Zolt: And so you know, it kind of, I broaden that realization, to understanding that this is all like you say, this is all nature, whether it's a nature that we can touch, or see with our own eyes, or nature that has only been revealed to us by building these very sophisticated instruments to take photographs of things that are vastly far away and vastly beyond our personal experience. And yet, it's all nature. There's only one nature, there's only one world where our little Earth here is just one teeny, tiny part of that nature. And we're obviously intimately connected with it. And we should be. Skipper: Yeah. Zolt: And I think there's a connection with the broader universe. Skipper: So yeah, I was thinking about as you were talking about this, again, one of the ideas that fascinates me about any kind of space observation, let alone photography, is that because of the distances that we're dealing with, we're looking, the thing that we're seeing is, it's almost like time travel, as we're looking out into the universe. And I suppose in a way, when we take a picture here on our planet, that it can also be time travel, as we're capturing the natural world at the state where it is. My family recently, we went to a museum, and it was a natural history museums where there were many of these animal diorama where you could see, you know, some approximation of this animal in their natural world. And we walked by a number of exhibits where the animals were marked extinct. And I thought, Well, number one, I'm glad that I can see what this animal might have looked like. And I'm glad that I could see how they might have functioned in the ecosystem and learn a little bit more -- my daughter was fascinated. However, it saddened me to think that, you know, this particular bird or this particular animal, or these particular types of vegetation didn't exist anymore. And I suppose even in a way, photography on our planet can be a way of time travel. Zolt: Yeah, absolutely. Certainly, you're always capturing a slice of time. Skipper: Right. Zolt: And that's another thing I haven't explored as much as I would like, but the time domain is pretty interesting. And there's some things you can do, obviously, motion pictures, you can extend that time slice -- Skipper: Sure. Zolt: But even in still photography, you can take a time-lapse and composite those images together and whatever is changing will will have an effect on that image. And I think that's an interesting thing to pursue. But yeah, you're absolutely right that our view of the world is always always a snapshot. You know, we call them snapshots. But all photography is snapshots. And, like you say, when we look farther out, we look into space, the farther back in time, we're looking because light travels at a finite speed. And therefore, farther away it is, the longer it took for that link, to get to us. That's one of the neat things about astronomy and astrophysics, that we can figure that out. We're seeing things out in the universe as they were, not as they are today. It's a hard concept to wrap your head around. And then in the largest scales, it becomes totally unintuitive. Because physics is doing really weird things, that those very large scales that those are very high energies and high speeds. But yeah, that the time element is is fascinating. And in our experience of -- just like our experience of light is very limited. Our experience of time is very limited and very particular to our human experience. So, you know, other animals might work on a much different timescale, like I think about a hummingbird. I mean, their timescale is vastly different from ours. Sure. So and then the historical like, like I say, it's fascinating. Skipper: We've already been talking for a good chunk of time now. And I think that we could continue to talk, I feel like we're at a point in the conversation where we can start wrapping things up. So I'll ask you some of the questions that I ask a lot of the guests that come on the show, we've revised them slightly for the second season. So Zolt, what is one of the most important lessons that you've learned in your life so far or in your work? Zolt: That's -- yeah, I think I have to go back to this idea of the oneness of nature, and an appreciation for the world and in for nature. And the fact that it's really, as we see our effect on nature as incomprehensible, as it might be humans can have such a vast influence on such a large thing as the whole planet Earth, of what we're doing, we have to be conscious of how we're interacting with the world, and we have to be conscious of the oneness of nature, you know, it's a little frustrating, because I personally have very little influence on that. You know, one can, one can do what one can do, and I think trying to instill in people that appreciation, that's one of the goals I've had in my, in what I've done, both with Hubble's results, and my personal photography is to try to instill in people, the wondrousness of nature, and in the fact that we have some power to preserve it, to protect it, conserve it, and we need to do that. Skipper: Yeah. What's one thing that you're really excited about right now, and that can be something you're watching or listening to or maybe something you're reading something you can't put down? Zolt: Lately, I've been obsessed with astrophotography. That's a complicated business. So I spent a lot of time recently trying to understand the universe of Astro photography, and it's a much bigger universe than I thought before I really got into it as a personal thing, as a backyard Astro photographer. Skipper: Got it. Zolt: It's kind of an aside, but it's kind of an amazing time because a lot of this equipment, hardware and software is just now available, has been for a while but accessible to people. I mean, in the past it was accessible, you know, maybe only to professional astronomers, but now it's accessible to a lot of people. It's still very expensive, but so anyway, that's kind of my right now -- what I'm mostly obsessed about. I tend -- I mean I pay attention to the news, I try to keep up. But it also takes me it also is frustrating because I see so many things that I wish the world weren't that way. And so I've actually kind of cut down on my news consumption, because I don't want to raise my blood pressure too much. Skipper: Yeah, there's a lot that's happening. Zolt: But in terms of my, my personal life, I guess, it's the astrophotography that I've been most obsessed with. Skipper: If someone were interested in, in getting started in astrophotography, because I know it's not as simple as buying a telescope and holding your smartphone up to the telescope. Is there a place, is there a book, is there some sort of resource that people should look to if they're interested in that? Zolt: Oh, there's lots of them. And you know, obviously, today there's a wealth of information on just about anything. Skipper: Sure. Zolt: Part is knowing what information to trust. Skipper: Yeah. Zolt: Certainly a trusted source is there's a couple of there used to be traditional magazines, but of course, they have online presence today. "Sky & Telescope" is probably the premier -- and I would probably go to "Sky & Telescope". Skipper: Okay. Yeah. Well, we'll check out and we'll put in the show notes. Yep. Zolt: They have a lot of basic information, you know, so how to choose a telescope, how to get into astrophotography, that kind of stuff. That's a good start as any. Skipper: Yeah. Zolt: There's a lot of there's a neat site that's called cloudy nights -- CloudyNights.com. And it's kind of a mostly a forum for enthusiasts to share information and ask questions. But it's much more is anything like that? It's, it's much harder to find the information you're looking for. But it's really actually a pretty good resource to people on there tend to be helpful, rather than, you know, a lot of these kinds of things. There's, you know, people that just got off on some tangent or something, but -- Skipper: Yeah, okay. We'll link to both of those. So if you had a day off, and I know you're semi-retired, and you could do anything, money was no object, you could be anywhere, you could conjure from your imagination. What would you do? Zolt: I'd probably go to a mountaintop somewhere, specifically a mountaintop observatory. Okay, like Mauna Kea in Hawaii, or Cerro Tololo. In Chile. Okay, I've been to Mauna Kea, it's a fascinating place a tough place to get to. But just the ironic thing about those places is that visually it it's harder to see the sky because the lack of oxygen altitude, Mauna Kea is 14,000 feet. And at that altitude, the amount of oxygen in the air is much lower, and so your eyes don't work as well. Skipper: Okay. Zolt: But someplace like Kitt Peak, which is nine or 10,000 feet in Arizona, that's a wonderful place to end as a whole collection of telescopes up there. And I've been there a few times. That's the one thing that I sort of regret not fully pursuing an astronomy degree was that I didn't ever get to do that mountaintop observing at the big observatories. Skipper: I see. Zolt: And that's really what I wanted to do as an astronomer. Skipper: Right. Zolt: And then today, you don't need to go there because they're all operated mostly remotely. So that's one of those romantic things about astronomy and traveling to the mountaintop, some remote mountaintop. And doing your observing at the telescope. Doesn't happen so much anymore. Skipper: Got it. Zolt: But that's probably one of the -- there's a million I mean, I'd love to see the aurora. Go to Alaska, or or Yellowknife, Canada, which are great places to see the aurora. I've not done that. There's a million things. Skipper: Yeah. Well, so where can people find out more about you? We've talked about your website, we will definitely link to it. Is there somewhere other than zoltlevay.com? Zolt: That's my website that I maintain. I'm not a very good maintainer. But I don't really keep it up like I would like to. But yeah, that's, that's where it mostly is. I will point out that the work that I did and other people did for Hubble is all available at hubblesite.org. Skipper: Okay. Zolt: And now with Webb, webbtelescope.org -- is the equivalent site for the James Webb Space Telescope, which I've done a little bit of, for James Webb, but a lot of good stuff coming out of there. But certainly, Hubble Site is a great resource. If you want to see all the images and a lot of information about the telescope and the science that's coming out of the telescope, that's the best source for that. Skipper: Okay. Zolt: And I'm on Facebook, Flickr, Instagram, all the usual social media. Skipper: Nice. We'll link to them all appropriately, and people can find you at their heart's desire. Well, thank you again, Zolt for taking time to have this conversation during this conversation. My mind has been blown a few times, as I imagined it would be. Thanks for making time. Zolt: Well, it's been my pleasure. It's been a great conversation. I really appreciate it. [Outro music] Skipper: And thank you for listening to How This Works. We appreciate your support and would love it if you'd subscribe and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts. We're in our second season, and it would mean a lot if you could share the show with just one other person, highlighting why they should listen. You can find us online at howthisworks.show, that's four words with no dashes. Again, that's howthisworks.show. We're also active on various social media platforms. I hope you gained some valuable insights from today's conversation with Zolt. I certainly did, and we'll talk again soon. [Bonus clip] And I read in a couple of different places that -- I mean, your full name is Zoltan, but you prefer to be called Zolt. Zolt: Yes. Skipper: Okay. Great. So I'll just introduce you like that. Zolt: That's fine. Skipper: Zolt Levay, okay. And just to make sure -- I think based on our previous conversation, am I pronouncing that right? Zolt Lrvay. Zolt: Full name, I usually pronounce as Zolt-an. Skipper: Okay. Zolt: That's the Hungarian pronunciation. Skipper: Zolt-an. Zolt: I don't use the Hungarian pronunciation of my last name. Skipper: Ooh, what's the Hungary Hungarian pronunciation? Zolt: Le-va-ee. Skipper: Oh, interesting. I can see how phonetically from American English that would not make much sense to a lot of folks. Zolt: My parents thought that and so they pronounce it the way they pronounce it. Skipper: Levay. Okay. Zolt: Sounds French but it's really Hungarian. Skipper: Okay, that's really good background. [Fin]