Space Art Options

[Gladstoner]

South pole of Enceladus:

[Stu]

WOW Gladstoner, they're gorgeous!!! As a lifelong space art fan and collector I am very impressed. Love those Enceladus pictures, very evocative. Do you have an online gallery?

[Gladstoner]

Nothing as of yet.

[Guest_PhilCo126_*]

Interesting: http://dreamsofspace.nfshost.com/spaceart.htm

[David]

Interesting: http://dreamsofspace.nfshost.com/spaceart.htm

I remember a lot (though certainly not all, or even most) of that art from the children's space books I used to read when I was young -- I wish I still had some of those books! Libraries have long since discarded them as "out of date", and used book stores rarely carry them.

Chesley Bonestell was of course the best space artist from the period, but I am also partial to the work of Jack Coggins -- which, if not so technically proficient, had a wonderful way of capturing the darkness and loneliness of distant regions of space.

[edstrick]

Ludek Pesek did quite a bit of georgeous geologically more realistic space art for National Geographic in the late 60's, early 70's. There's at least one book of his space-art. He also wrote an early (first or second) manned-mission-to-Mars novel, I think the title was "The Earth is Near", with the obligatory problems and crew struggle to survive plotline. It was nothing spectacular, but it was well done and carefully thought out.

[paxdan]

http://www.google.com/virgle/index.html

Someone has been reading their KSR by the look of things. Nice graphic for a april fools.

[Gladstoner]

Fire and ice:

[Gladstoner]

Uranus at equinox:

[Juramike]

Here's my artistic impression of the view from 150 km above the T16 canyon of Titan on an exceptionally haze-free day:



Full resolution here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/31678681@N07/4367364580/

I used the same techinque as Gladstoner used in the first image of this thread, I combined multiple terrestrial photographs from my own collection then played with them heavily.

-Mike

[dilo]

Mike, you did an amazing work!
Are the detailed surface features rendered with some CG software or based on reaal pictures from another similar place?

[Juramike]

Thanks!

They are real pictures taken during some airplane trips over the last few years. The foreground canyon is Deer Canyon, Colorado, the mid background is a windfarm over Utah, and the sunset cloud image was over the flying over the Appalachians of North Carolina (always good for a hazy image - the cloud images were barely contrast enhanced.)

[Explorer1]

Would the sky really be blue? I was under the impression that quite a bit of oxygen is needed for that color, at least near the surface. Still looks cool though!

[djellison]

Yes it would - google for some Huygens descent imagery and spectroscopy, it's been quite well establshed.

[Explorer1]

Of course, the blue haze layer, I forgot about it! Never mind!

[Juramike]

Would the sky really be blue?

At that altitude, yes. I used the upper left panel of PIA08112 as a guide. Specifically, the lower right corner of that panel since it was the most sunward direction.

[JohnVV]

i like this one of Io
[attachment=20767:Io_Shadow_Jupiter.png]
it is one of my desktop backgrounds

or this new raw image from Cassini
[attachment=20768:N00151593_ir2a.png]
for some odd reason i keep hearing this "space opera " theme
"the imperial march "

Deimos

[centsworth_II]

Trying to capture winter at troy.

First my model MER on the floor, flashlight on bed. Then adding the
Calypso panorama and fiddling around in photoshop elements.

[Juramike]

Beautiful! I like the spotlight effect when it is just on the floor!

[centsworth_II]

Thanks. Actually it's on a tilted piece of cardboard on the floor. That shot is more dramatic, but less realistic.

Here are some other shots plus an intermediate photoshop version.

[Guest_Lunik9_*]

Pluto by Ron Miller;
http://www.black-cat-studios.com/catalog/pluto.html

Not as red as depicted on most of the NASA artist's impressions

[JohnVV]

Pluto was brought up so
Pluto rise and Charon rise
[attachment=22422:PlutoRise.png] [attachment=22423:charonrise.jpg]
Pluto based on the map by:Marc Buie
http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~buie/pluto/maptoys.html

[Gladstoner]

Some Titan vistas....

Eclipse with Saturn:



(A Hubble image of Saturn was used.)

North pole lake:



Equatorial terrain:



(I altered one of my photos of Mosaic Canyon, Death Valley, CA.)

[Gladstoner]

Saturn sky....

Starting with a Cassini image (reoriented/rotated, with corners filled in):



I sampled the haze and bits of sky visible in front of the Encke gap, and produced this color palette:



I then enlarged and expanded the palette:



Added some clouds (sampled from the Cassini image):



And completed the scene:

[scalbers]

Very nice vistas / renderings. The Titan lake view gives me an idea to try my sky simulation software, previously run with Mars aerosols, to use aerosol data from Titan. I see this reference that can help:

http://www.ciclops.org/media/sp/2010/6514_15623_0.pdf

Both surface and simulated descent views would be interesting to see.

[Gladstoner]

Very nice vistas / renderings. The Titan lake view gives me an idea to try my sky simulation software, previously run with Mars aerosols, to use aerosol data from Titan. I see this reference that can help:

http://www.ciclops.org/media/sp/2010/6514_15623_0.pdf

Both surface and simulated descent views would be interesting to see.

Thank you.

Any attempts to estimate the accurate appearance of the sky of Titan, or any world, would be appreciated.

[Gladstoner]

A 'hot Jupiter' exoplanet around a sun-like star....

[Gladstoner]

Several years ago, I did some artwork of the Gliese 581 system. Some could fill in for TRAPPIST-1:



A 'Venus twin', perhaps TRAPPIST-1c (originally Gliese 581c):



Descending into the clouds:



Volcanic surface:

[Gladstoner]

Cloud-shrouded ocean planet (originally Gliese 581d):



Approaching the cloud deck:



Endless swells:



The sky here has a slightly greenish cast due to the high air pressure at the surface (I read about this phenomenon somewhere, but I'm not sure where. I gather that the sky would be green because much of the blue light has been scattered away higher up).

(As you can probably tell, all images above, except the first one with the red dwarf star and planets, are altered photos.)

[Gladstoner]

'Clarified hot Neptune' (originally Gliese 581b):



The temperature of the atmosphere is sufficiently high to prevent the formation of clouds. As a result, the planet's blue color is due almost entirely to Rayleigh scattering.

Some haze offers a bit of relief to the monotony:

[cndwrld]

In case you're interested...
Everyone who worked on the Rosetta comet mission loved the paintings made by Ekaterina Smirnov. Her work really captured not only the comet, but the excitement of seeing the new images each day.

67P Images here.

Her main web site at this link.

Follow her on Twitter at @artapostrophe.

[scalbers]

Any attempts to estimate the accurate appearance of the sky of Titan, or any world, would be appreciated.

I'm still considering how to render Titan's sky from the surface. This University or Arizona animation shows a more uniform sky even near the sun without an aureole. This makes sense the more I think about it. The sun and sky color look pretty good. It's a quite well done rendering of the descent and surface views.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9L471ct7YDo (4:22 time in the video).

Might be a challenge to see much sun reflection in a lake, maybe a few nearly pointlike glitter reflections. The pattern of glitters would be elongated in the vertical. The sun itself is also nearly pointlike, about like Uranus looks in a 50x telescope. The overall sky could darken a bit near the horizon, depending on the regional surface albedo.