Space Art

An asteroid is briefly illuminated by a star that has gone supernova. The star resides in a nearby galaxy that is seen here edge on. A giant gas planet rises over the horizon of one of its ice moons. A small black hole orbiting tightly around a massive red giant star rips matter from its companion. In a process not fully understood by scientists the black hole throws twin jets of plasma in opposite directions, with velocities that approach the speed of light. Here you are witness to the event that ended the reign of the dinosaurs as an asteroid smashes into the Earth with cataclysmic results. Extra solar planets are being discovered at an almost alarming rate. Here a massive gas planet circles perilously close to its companion star in a four day orbit. The planet is so close that the solar wind constantly erodes large amounts of gas from its outer atmosphere.

Deep within the Orion Nebula a new star can be seen forming from the surrounding gas cloud. New stars are called protostars and are formed when gravity drags large amounts of hydrogen together. A small moon drifting aimlessly through deep space has been captured by a large Saturn-like planet. The newly acquired moon has an orbit that is inclined from the plane of the planets rings, giving the viewer an up close and personal look at the spectacular rings. A protostar is the term used to describe a newly forming star. In this edge-on view a star lies hidden from sight deep within its accretion disc that has gathered up from the surrounding birth cloud. Shown here is a Proto star as seen from slightly above the plane of its spiraling accretion disc. Here is Jupiter as seen from Io. The gas giant is partially hidden from view by an erupting volcano just over the horizon.

This image depicts two of the moons of a Neptune-like world as the planet rises slowly over the limb of the outermost moon. The inner moon can be seen casting a shadow onto the pale blue cloud tops of the large planet. Somewhere the moon of a large gas planet lies within the habitable zone of it's star. This is the view you might have as the star rises over the limb of such a moon and illuminates its cloud tops. This painting was inspired by the famous Hubble telescope picture known as the Pillars of Creation. Just as in the Hubble photo, my painting depicts a large stellar nursery, perhaps four to six light years across. In the distant past a race of intelligent beings descends down from outer space in their mother ship.

This is the view you might have if you were standing on the surface of a volcanic moon resembling Io. Like Io, this moon is heated by friction due to the combined tidal pull of the large gas planet and it's other moons. There are most likely many Earth-like planets, large and small, scattered throughout our vast universe. In this image an Earth-like planet three times the mass of Earth is seen from one of it's rocky moons that also has an atmosphere capable of sustaining life. Stars with masses greatly exceeding our own sun usually end their lives in a cataclysmic explosion known as a supernova. After a star blows off its outer layers in a supernova, what is left is usually a small neutron star at the center of a rapidly expanding cloud of dust and gas called a planetary nebula. This painting is a view from a planet that is very close to a planetary nebula. In this picture two moons rise above the horizon of a world that is in close proximity to a star cluster containing mainly red dwarf stars. Scientists have discovered that binary star systems are quite common in our galaxy. Here is the rare alignment of a red dwarf star and a large blue star. The red dwarf, along with it's system of planets, are all in a large elliptical orbit around the very distant blue giant.