ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how astrophysicists look at and visualizes outer space – something that is very big, very far away, and, in most cases, has ceased to exist millions of years ago. It examines for the rising complexity in astrophysics visualization: from the challenges of taking photographs of outer space phenomena that emit light in wavelengths not detectable by the human eye and therefore in need of a lot of manipulation in the visualization process, to the methods of visualizing phenomena that are in their very essence invisible since they consist only in mathematical data. The chapter discusses the reasons for visualizing outer space, considering the fact that the data is, in reality, invisible. The most difficult part of research is to understand which questions to ask, and in this context visualization is extremely useful because it is much closer to human intuition than formal equations. In many cases, astrophysical data must be studied visually before begin to describe mathematically.
