From the detection of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) to the discovery of pulsars—which confirmed the existence of neutron stars and enabled precision tests of general relativity—radio astronomy has repeatedly altered our perception of the cosmos.
And yet, the field arguably doesn’t get its flowers. To a degree, that’s understandable. The public’s imagination is ignited by vivid, colorful images captured by optical and infrared observatories like Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope. Radio data, by contrast, is invisible to the eye and must be processed and visualized in representative color schemes.