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Posted by: Cugel Nov 28 2005, 08:55 AM

http://www.space4case.com/space4case/index1.php?action=&rubriek=55100&uitklap=55000

This guy, Kees Veenenbos, is mostly known for his Mars renderings (he did some work for NASA). This is his first attempt at the surface of Titan.

Posted by: The Messenger Nov 28 2005, 02:44 PM

I think the surface of Titan has been perfectly rendered by a prior Dutch Master, Van Gogh

Posted by: mars loon Nov 28 2005, 05:19 PM

Kees renderings of Mars are beautiful and inspiring !!

Posted by: mike Nov 28 2005, 05:23 PM

And of course upon death all souls travel to Titan, and as the old story goes, when Van Gogh saw how amazingly accurate his paintings were he almost cut off his other ear (with a Titanease laser saw, of course).

Posted by: mike Nov 28 2005, 05:30 PM

On a more serious note, it is fun to see how modern technology more and more allows people to make accurate constructions of places that no one has ever really seen. Perhaps someday a picture taken from the surface of Titan will perfectly match one of those renderings, though perhaps too no one will remember the renderings by then (or they won't remember that they remember, or they could never tell anyone they ever knew anything)..

Posted by: volcanopele Nov 28 2005, 05:31 PM

Very nice, though maybe a bit too rough. so far, no evidence of any peaks or ridges taller than a couple of hundred meters.

Posted by: tfisher Nov 28 2005, 05:33 PM

For some reason, there is a common perception that alien landscapes should be rough, as in having tall, craggy spires and cliffs. I wonder where that originated from -- it really is quite pervasive.

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Nov 28 2005, 06:19 PM

I agree.  Look at the old paintings of what the surface of the Moon was supposed to look like, lots of craggy spires and jagged cliffs.  If I have time I'll try and dig one up.

EDIT: Found one. "Exploring the Moon" 1948, Chesley Bonestell (1888-1986)

Posted by: mike Nov 28 2005, 08:24 PM

I suspect that the data the Titan artist used was itself rather coarse. Personally though I'd say spiky mountains are more interesting than empty flat plains.. even better would be plains or mountains with something actually on them (plants, buildings, Stonehenges, obelisks of Great Knowledge), but hey, if you're going to have otherwise barren terrain make it spiky.

In the case of the Moon and Titan, everyone 'knows' that they are bereft of any alien intelligence or serious life, so really all you have is spiky mountains. Dry riverbeds would be good. Evocative. Or even alien ruins or crashed spaceships, but then people say it's fiction rather than scientific, and some people mention Marvin the Martian and little green men and grey anus-probers and such, and it's a whole thing, don't you know.

Posted by: elakdawalla Nov 28 2005, 08:59 PM

My favorite Titan artwork these days is the one that was picked to be "most like Titan" by Larry Soderblom and Jonathan Lunine from the entries in our http://www.planetary.org/explore/topics/cassini_huygens/artcontest.html. They really liked this one, by artist David Ziels.


Actually, maybe that's my second favorite from the contest. I'm afraid to admit that this one is probably my favorite. (Yes, that is Huygens being hauled away by the space penguins. Bryce Jacobs titled the work "Wait 'til Dad Sees This!")


--Emily

Posted by: helvick Nov 28 2005, 09:20 PM

Brilliant.

Posted by: volcanopele Nov 28 2005, 09:42 PM

Wow, that one by David Ziels is VERY nice. I especially like the volcanic eruption in the background

Posted by: mike Nov 28 2005, 10:33 PM

I hope the space penguins find Huygens interesting.

Posted by: DDAVIS Nov 29 2005, 12:32 AM

[quote=tfisher,Nov 28 2005, 05:33 PM]
For some reason, there is a common perception that alien landscapes should be rough, as in having tall, craggy spires and cliffs. I wonder where that originated from -- it really is quite pervasive.

An early expression of 'craggy lunar scenery' was the work of artist and engineer James Nasmyth, who in the 1870's used observations and photographs to sculpt plaster models of real lunar features in the book 'The Moon : Considered as a Planet, a World, and a Satellite by James Nasmyth and James Carpenter', such as seen here:

http://www.shallowsky.com/xmas2k/huntington/

An extrapolation of his already vertically exaggerated models depicting a view from the surface can be seen here:

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a15/a15.nasmyth.jpg

The space art of Chesley Bonestell, first published in Life magazine in the 1940's, brought the stark realism of a master Hollywood matte painter to the field of Astronomy, with many portrayals of the Moon made with reference to photos, accurately placing the perspective of the various features but verticallt stretching the relies 'to taste'. Examples of Lunar paintings, not necessarily of actual features but showing the superficial resemblence to the Moon becoming 'craggy' when closely examined, can be seen here:

http://www.bonestell.com/the_chesley_bonestell_archives012.htm

Chesley told me during one of my many visits to his studio that he was inspired by the rocky spires in some Gustav Dore' engravings for the 'look' of his airless landscapes. There was also a desire to show the lack of any kind of water erosion in mountains. Later artists, particularly in the science fiction field, propagated the high vertical relief stereotype endlessly.
Among the few artists to carefully allow for the actual topography of the Moon as seen along the limb through telescopes was Artist and astronomer Lucian Rudeaux, active in the early 20th century. Works of his show a tendecy to portray reasonable Lunar topography in the far distance with rougher foreground scenery below the resolution of earthbased observations ''filled in' . There is a tendecy to try to paint the kind of dramatic landscapes attractive to artists and clients, with the good artists using the best information available, reserving the imagination particularly for the closest foreground. An example of a Rudaux Lunar scene can be seen here, at this otherwise useless site:

http://www.geocentricity.com/ba1/no90/gotomoon.html

Now with photos of Lunar and Martian Terrain and increasing information on other objects and worlds available to artists such paintings can be made closer to the ideal of treating the viewer to a window to an alien world.


Don

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Nov 29 2005, 01:29 AM

I imagine that tall, sharp crags were popular in space paintings just because they look more dramatic -- who the hell wants to look at a low, hummocky landscape instead? (Amazingly, at least one 19th-century author correctly predicted low, eroded-looking hillocks all over most of the Moon, and depicted them in a lithograph -- although I can't remember if he foresaw erosion by a steady rain of tiny meteoroids as the cause. In retrospect, it's absolutely amazing that most scientists seem to have been caught completely off-guard by Ranger 7's revelation of the eroded nature of lunar craters. But then, most scientists were also caught off guard by Mariner 4's revelation of Martian craters a year later.)

Posted by: Gsnorgathon Nov 29 2005, 10:09 AM

http://www.psi.edu/hartmann/painting.html did an updated version of that classic Bonestell. I'm not sure if I've seen other homages along the same lines or not. I remember seeing a different, and larger, version before; but after wasting I can't tell you how much time searching, I've been unable to find it.

Posted by: AndyG Nov 29 2005, 02:44 PM

Craggy mountains? I grew up with, and love this cover of Earthlight, the novel by Arthur C Clarke...



Wildly not right, but very evocative of an alien place. It also fits much better on a book cover than the low hills of Apollo do!

Andy G

Posted by: chris Nov 29 2005, 03:23 PM

Is it so surprising? An awful lot of big mountains on this planet are very craggy (think of all the pictures of everest you have seen). Using those as a basis for mountains where there is less gravity suggests even taller, craggier shapes. And remember, they look dramatic, so in the absence of knowing they are smooth, it seems a good choice.

What about early visualisations of the surface of ice moons? I would guess that a lot of look remarkably like spectacular pictures from our poles, except with the sky full of stars and the local gas giant...

Chris

Posted by: tty Nov 29 2005, 06:11 PM

Dramatic craggy mountains on Earth are almost always due to either glacial erosion or carstification, so in the absence of both the mountains on other planets/moons do tend to look a bit tame.

tty

Posted by: ljk4-1 Nov 29 2005, 09:45 PM

The 1962 edition of the Time-Life Natures Series book, The Universe, has a painting of a mountain on Europa. Though it is covered in ice, it otherwise looks like a mountain you would find on Earth. I guess the interesting point is that they correctly guessed, to a degree, that Europa would have an icy surface.

Is it still accurate from the Voyager days that nothing on Europa can be higher than 1,500 feet?

In The Earth edition of the same TLN series, there is a beautiful two-page painting of the interior of a lunar crater, complete with crags and sharp edges. This is the same book that in its initial 1962 edition, the concepts of plate tectonics and continental drift are given brief but generally unfavorable mentions.

And don't miss the painting of Earth as it may be several billion years from now, when Sol has shrunk to a white dwarf and Luna looms large in the sky over a frozen, dead landscape.

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Nov 30 2005, 02:43 AM

Recent stereo image analysis by Paul Schenk indicates that Europa's topography may be much dramatic than previously believed, with altitude differences of 2 km and some small-scale ones of 1 km:

http://astrogeology.usgs.gov/Projects/ISPRS/MEETINGS/Houston2003/abstracts/Schenk_isprs_mar03.pdf

http://www.aas.org/publications/baas/v34n3/dps2002/224.htm

Posted by: edstrick Nov 30 2005, 06:44 AM

Bruce-- "...Recent stereo image analysis by Paul Schenk indicates that Europa's topography may be much dramatic than previously believed, with altitude differences of 2 km and some small-scale ones of 1 km..."

Two rules-of-thumb seem to have emerged from Voyager and post-Voyager outer solar system exploration: 1.) The lighter an icy-body's suface is, the more geologically active it is. (granted, you can have objects that are probably depleted in rock like some of Saturn's ice satellites or fully differentiated, so they may tend to be lighter than you'd expect) 2.) The more geologically active an ice satellite is, the less the global and medium scale surface roughness and the greater the small scale surface roughness. A surface pulverised by cratering may be lumpy, but made of crushed ice, while an active surface like Europa's and Enceladus' has not had it's glacier-surface-topography scale features turned into regolith.

Posted by: mars loon Dec 3 2005, 01:38 AM

They are both quite beautiful and appropriate. Bookends from the scientific and spiritual viewpoints

"March of the Penquins", just out on DVD, exemplifies extreme life

Posted by: ngunn Dec 20 2005, 10:54 AM

I've just bought a copy of the new Kate Bush double CD 'Aerial'. The cover design is a semi-surreal orange landscape. I put my thumb over the setting sun (too bright and too near the horizon) and thought - that sky looks a lot like I imagine he sky on Titan to be. Opening the case I find the two CDs have indvidual names: 'Sea of Honey' and 'Sky of Honey'. Then I remembered a post on this site somewhere describing the Titanian haze as 'butterscotch-coloured'. O.K. the sky's not bad but what about the sea? The lower half of the cover definitely shows a wet surface. Well, the cover design and album titles could have been decided in early 2005, after the Huygens landing but while there was still much talk of seas on Titan. Is there any connection at all? Can anybody shed (honey-coloured) light on the matter?

Posted by: ustrax Dec 20 2005, 11:15 AM

I remember the penguins from the ESA competition, I made some sketches for that one before Huygens landing...but when I saw time limit had passed...fortunately!
Looking at all that amazing work mine do look good...in my walls...


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v352/ustrax/titan_con.jpg

And this one had Huygens posing:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v352/ustrax/titan2.jpg

And...after landing...I really allucinated with the raw images...

http://www.markcarey.com/mars/discuss-22245-titan-observer.html

Posted by: elakdawalla Dec 20 2005, 03:46 PM

Speaking of art contests, I want to put in a shameless plug for the http://planetary.org/explore/topics/postcards_from_venus/ art contest, which closes January 13. Entries have not been coming in nearly as fast as they did for the Huygens contest -- which means you all stand a chance of winning if you enter. I would love to see a UMSF person win and get the trip to Darmstadt for Venus Express' arrival! (I don't judge the contest, so I can't fix it that way. )

--Emily

Posted by: ustrax Dec 20 2005, 04:52 PM

Ok...January 13...January 13...Don't forget that one ustrax...

Posted by: ustrax Dec 20 2005, 05:15 PM

Let's make Emily proud of us...
Come on you princes of imagination! You kings of imagery!


Here's my first sketch...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v352/ustrax/Figura1.jpg

Posted by: djellison Dec 20 2005, 09:07 PM

Ohh - I'm already working on a little something

Doug

Posted by: ustrax Dec 20 2005, 09:12 PM

Let's all do something!

Posted by: RNeuhaus Dec 20 2005, 09:59 PM

I imagine that the Venusian landscape is full of rocks, rounded land (no water erosion), somewhat dark, just few different colors, some bright spots on the peak of mountain, one very big mountain in the northen hemisphere, mostly is relatively flat. No visible sun, difusse light, orangish clouds. There might be a caravan of camels....

Rodolfo

Posted by: um3k Dec 21 2005, 04:12 PM

I'm a photographer, not a painter. Unfortunately I don't think I can make it to Venus and take some photos by the deadline. Otherwise, I would gladly enter.

Posted by: elakdawalla Dec 21 2005, 04:21 PM

Stay tuned...we have another contest coming up for photographers...

--Emily

Posted by: um3k Dec 21 2005, 04:25 PM

Tuned I will stay!

Posted by: ljk4-1 Feb 16 2006, 07:46 PM

If Titan has a body of liquid...

http://lava.nationalgeographic.com/cgi-bin/pod/PhotoOfTheDay.cgi?month=02&day=13&year=06

Posted by: ljk4-1 Mar 17 2006, 09:14 PM

Solar sailing to Titan - as seen in 1959:

http://www.plan59.com/av/av090.htm