Painting What Can’t Be Seen
Spacecraft are returning with vast amounts of data. We have recently seen the moons of Saturn, from less than a 200 km distance, through the eyes of the Cassini/Huygens mission. Twin Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity continue to explore the sands of the red planet Mars, having lasted over five years (their design lifetime was 90 days).
Early Days
Space artists did not always have it so good. In the early 20th century, most of what we knew about the skies came through telescopes. We had no close up images of moon geysers or Venusian summits. The grandfather of modern space art was, in fact, an astronomer. Lucien Rudaux was a careful observer, using the telescope of the Meudon Observatory outside of Paris, France. His oil paintings of Mars viewed from its moons, of Saturn and Jupiter, and of Martian dust storms still hold up remarkably today.
A view of Mars seen from its outer moon Deimos, by Lucien Rudaux, ca. 1930s
In the 1950s, Chesley Bonestell popularized space art by illustrating a series of articles by Willey Ley and Werner von Braun. His art depicts people exploring Mars 15 years before the first spacecraft arrived there. As science matured and we learned more about the planets, so space art matured, becoming more accurate and, in some ways, more sophisticated as a pure art form.
Paint what you know
The most Earth-like planet we know is Mars. Mars is a cold, desert world where summer heat waves scarcely reach the melting point of water. Its air pressure is equivalent to Earth at 100,000 feet. Despite its alien environment, wide expanses of Mars resemble our own planet’s arctic and subarctic regions. Mars has been scoured by winds, torn apart by volcanoes, ripped by meteors and asteroids, yet looks like the Earth in many places.
"Mars Hill" in Death Valley
Terrestrial desert regions provide natural analogs to Martian landscapes. In California’s Mojave Desert, Death Valley has a specific region named by artists “Mars Hill” (the name was later officially adopted by NASA and the Park Service). This rise is peppered with rocks which look strikingly like rocks found at the first Viking landing site on Mars.
Chryse Planitia from Viking 1
Don Davis took panoramic snapshots of the area …
Mars panorama painted by Don Davis
and created a beautiful Martian vista hauntingly similar to views we would see twenty-five years later by the Mars rover Spirit.
Mars panorama of the Columbia Hills by rover Spirit
One especially Mars-like vacation spot on Earth is Iceland. While being an arctic region, Iceland has the added advantage of harboring a host of active volcanoes. Volcanism has played an important role on Mars, Venus, and even moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Its interaction with icy conditions makes for unique scenes ripe for the artistic eye. Since Iceland provides a fine example of volcanic action in the presence of cold conditions, and it is far less expensive to visit Iceland than Jupiter, space artists travel to this island nation for excellent field experience.
Marilyn Flynn suffers for her art -- Viti, Iceland
Marilyn Flynn painted in the field at a site called Viti, …
Viti, Iceland
using what she sketched and photographed there–in the rain…
Ionian landscape -- Viti transported to another ice land
to paint her masterpiece of an Ionian landscape.
The artist has opportunity to not only portray new discoveries, but to anticipate them. Ron Miller painted dust devils on Mars decades before they were confirmed.
Ron Miller's Martian devils
In 1997, the Pathfinder lander caught several dust devils on its imager, and actually charted them moving over the craft with its meteorology instruments.
Real Martian dust devils, by Pathfinder
A few years later, the Mars Global Surveyor discovered trails left in the Martian sand by massive dust devils, confirming what Miller had predicted with the paint brush decades earlier.
Mars Global Surveyor's devil tracks
New artistic horizons
Space artists also venture into the realm of digital art. Some use programs such as Terragen to generate fractal landscapes, often overpainting with software like Photoshop or Illustrator. Others combine a foundation of acrylic painting done traditionally with digital techniques. This was the technique used in this scene, depicting the methane lakes of Saturn’s moon Titan, with a robotic Earth visitor above.
A blimp above the methane seas of Titan
While cosmic subjects are more difficult to paint first-hand than are other natural subjects, artists continue to immerse themselves in the natural wonders of this world, creating views of other planets that await future generations of artists who will actually paint there.
[For more examples of astronomical art, see the Gallery at IAAA.org, the web site of the International Association of Astronomical Artists.]
A great pleasure to read this article! I have one of Mr. Carroll’s smaller paintings, Jupiter seen from one of its moons, in my study. And Marilyn Flynn’s “Sand in your suit” hangs in my living room, a delightful romp down a Martian sand dune. If you, dear reader, have not yet experienced the wonder and beauty of the IAAA’s web site and the many artists who are members, drop what you are doing and go there AT ONCE. Michael only begins to tell of all the meticulous research and dedication to fact that all the IAAA’s artist practice. These artists are more than half scientist too. Their paintings and other renderings should be in every school in the country, to help encourage the study of science and engineering, and to encourage our exploration and development of space. And, while the IAAA artist is dedicated to as accurate a depiction as possible, I think most of them are also very hopeful and positive. “Look where we are going next,” they say.
Thanks, Pajamas Media, for publishing this.
This is awesome. I’m sure some Obamabot will come in crying about how a drug addict could have been given another free hit with this money instead of ‘wasting’ it on the space program. Can’t wait until we get another president that puts “SCIENCE” where it should be, with a man in a seat riding a rocket.
Robots run programs, people explore!
Sic semper tyrannis
Fabulous stuff. The space art of the 60s is one of the things that got me interested in a career in science. Some of the high resolution photos from the Apollo program are as spectacular as the concept art, in their own way.
Great article, Mike. It’s nice to see the history of exploratory art laid out in such clear detail.
A terrific article with stunning illustrations. We should always be exploring and thinking about the universe. I fear for our space program with the clownish Obamabots who run our country in 2010.
Very interesting article, which pushes me to make a point and ask a question:
The artist obviously must take credit for his/her creation. If someone takes a picture of Mona Lisa, credit goes to both Da Vinci and the Louvre, but not necessarily or exclusively to the photographer or the manufacturer and/or lender of the camera.
So, when Hubble (or any telescope) takes a picture of the Universe, why is it that credit routinely goes to the person/agency that took that picture?
For example, here:http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/
I find that to be in violation of the spirit of copyright laws. God, as the creator, must be acknowledged as the first entity to assign credit, and then the public that footed the bill to build that telescope and created these agencies.
Excellent point. Could you forward the address to which we should send model releases?
Two people can take the same set of data (many images comprise a single picture) and come up with different final images. There is art in image processing. It is a long process that entails many personal decisions about how to represent the data.
Thus the person who processes the data, the artist, should be given credit… not the just the camera.
The most impressive space painting I have ever seen was on the cover of the L-5 newsletter (I think) called “Ultimate Sandbox” by Michael Whelan. It had a little girl in a Miss Piggy spacesuit sitting on the lunar surface making a dust castle. (Can’t link it, but it can be googled)
Oh well, maybe my great-great grandchildren will have the chance….