Modesto mom's hobby of touching up space images getting a lot of attention
MODESTO - A former graphic designer processed some mind-blowing new images of Jupiter that were recently released by NASA.
Judy Schmidt has always been humble about her hobby. After all, she has no formal education in astronomy. But when she started tinkering with the latest data from Jupiter, she says it was an opportunity to hone her skills by blending science with art.
"You have to look outward in order to put yourself in perspective," said Judy Schmidt.
Schmidt is a parent who doubles as a planetary prodigy.
"I've been doing this for a while now but this is the first time NASA picked it up," said Schmidt.
Her work is so out of this world that when it came time to release new images of Jupiter from NASA's James Webb space telescope, the agency tapped into Schmidt's celestial service.
"Every picture is a puzzle and that's another thing I enjoy. I enjoy puzzles a lot," she said.
But these puzzles aren't put together with some fancy software. The 39-year-old mostly sticks to Photoshop, on her PC, taking NASA's infrared images and transferring them into visible light by sharpening and refining them with color.
"It's just like say, an x-ray. You know what an x-ray is, even though you cannot see x-ray light with your eyes, you know that it is able to take a picture of your skeleton," she said. "It's kind of like that, except, you know there's radio waves, microwaves, gamma rays."
And this is no full-time gig. It's just a hobby, for the Modesto mom who prefers to gravitate toward activities with her 18-month son and husband who aren't always as awe-struck about her space snapshots.
"Just the other night, he was looking at my computer and he was like, 'I don't know what you do!'" she said.
As you might imagine, all of this precision work is pretty time-intensive. Schmidt says each image takes about eight hours to complete.
"I'm just glad to make something that people can enjoy," she said.
