@Nine @Kaffe

I think cool pictures is definitely important to get the general public to support space exploration because let's be honest, most people are not going to give a shit about why Neptune's magnetic axis is way off of Neptune's rotation axis or something like that.

Personally, I view the cool pictures as icing on the cake. And yes there are entire departments that take complex infrared, ultraviolet, x-ray, etc. data from space telescopes and process it so it looks pretty for us.