Does This iPad Make My Asteroid Look Fat?: Examining perceptions of astronomy images across mobile platforms

The Aesthetics & Astronomy (A&A) team consists of a unique combination of professional astronomy communicators, astrophysicists, and aesthetics experts from the discipline of psychology, for whom a major goal is to explore how best to convey scientific information with non-expert audiences.  In this study, funded by the Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Studies Program, an online survey and two focus groups were used to explore whether mobile platforms affect perception of astronomy images.  The online study, conducted in December of 2010, resulted in 2,384 usable responses in which participants on their mobile devices were randomly assigned to view 1 of 12 astronomy images.  We collected demographic data, information about the type of mobile device, reactions to the image shown, and timed how long viewers looked at the image. Additionally, two focus groups were conducted, one with 12 experts (astrophysicists/astronomers) and one with 10 non-expert volunteers from the public.  Both experts and non-experts were presented with 3 deep space images across 3 platforms- a large projection screen, an iPad, and a small mobile device (iPhone).  Although this was part of a larger study, we report here just on the mobile platform. Results indicated that there was support for Smith & Smith's 2001 concept of facsimile accommodation in that, as might be expected, bigger was better except in the absence of a comparison, where participants adapted to the platform size.  The results raise questions as to both size and quality of images on mobile platforms in a rapidly changing technological world.