Abstract — Astronomers and astrophysicists study galaxy formation and evolution by analyzing and comparing real galaxy observations, captured by telescopes, and simulated galaxy observations, generated from theoretical models. They approach this through a combination of statistical and visual analysis, conducted either independently or sequentially. During the first year of an on-going design study with astronomers and astrophysicists, we explored approaches to integrating statistical and visual analysis to enhance understanding of these data. Contributions from this stage of the study include a data and task abstraction for statistically and visually analyzing real and simulated galaxy observations, as well as an initial design, implemented in a prototype called GalStamps, and evaluated through two case studies with domain experts.