Advances in the field of metrology have resulted in totally novel instruments the raw data of which needs to be presented in images comprehensible to human beings, which is why Torsten Enßlin’s group at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching has been researching information field theory for the past decade. Building upon this theory, the team develops imaging software known as NIFTy, which is able to process data from different instruments to deduce the structural properties of a given observation. NIFTy5, for example, used data from the Gaia space observatory to determine the spatial distribution of dust clouds in the Milky Way.