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What might future explorers of the solar system see? Find out by taking an interactive tour through the eyes of Hugo Award-winning artist Ron Miller. Text and narration by Ed Bell
| March 30, 2010 | 59
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Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisdoomsday never comes , because there are so many miraculous things waiting for we human beings to see
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's fantastic!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthere are so many things that people can't imagin.
Amazing!
I am in AWE!!! Marvelous work.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe human beings are very lucky to be able to appreciate such wonders. Thank you for making these wonders accessible.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGreat Thank for your imagin base on scient I really love on them .How can I get my imagin out by your ability..NIRVANA.....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAmazing. A picture can realy do its stuff
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswow! it seems humans mind can reach ultimate views
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisrastogis
Testing-associates
you write: "the sun appears to rise and set twice during a Mercurian day."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA Mercurian day is quite long:
"However, radar observations in 1965 proved that the planet has a 3:2 spinorbit resonance, rotating three times for every two revolutions around the Sun;" --wikipedia, my quick source.
You write: "the sun appears to rise and set twice during a Mercurian day."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisa Mercurian day is quite long.
"However, radar observations in 1965 proved that the planet has a 3:2 spin–orbit resonance, rotating three times for every two revolutions around the Sun;" --wikipedia, my quick source
Awesome (something to appreciate and admire with respect to the Almighty Creation) instead of repeating the mistake of the Babylon.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat is true...but the sun does in fact rise and set twice during that very long day.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHi, I've enjoyed these pictures, but I must point out that solar haloes on Saturn are quite different to those on earth, because ammonia crystals have a different shape to those formed by water ice. So sundogs have a different appearance, as you can see here: http://www.atoptics.co.uk/halo/oworld.htm
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou're quite right! In trying to avoid having two many weird things going on in the picture at the same time, I thought about pretending we're at a location deep enough in the atmosphere for water ice crystals to predominate. This may or may not have worked out for me.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAmazing pictures. Great source of inspiration as well. Thank you very much. I'll definitely use them for my desktop.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell, the result is beautiful. Can I ask if you work mainly from photographs, or computer models, or physical models, or imagination?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisImagination, largely, along with an awful lot of homework. I've been creating astronomical art for about 40 years, so I have accumulated not only a large reference library here but a network of astronomers and other scientists I consult as well. Often more time is spent researching a picture than is spent on rendering it. My real inspiration, however, is the work of Chesley Bonestell, which always reminds me to never forget that a good space painting must first be a good landscape painting. I kind of like to think (very immodestly, I admit) that I and my fellow astronomical artists are descendants of the old Hudson River School of art.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat's interesting. I'm a big fan of Bonestell's work, and I can also see the connection with the Hudson River School. I struggle to imagine good space paintings that were not in some Romantic style! :-)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am such a fan of Bonestell that I even wrote a book about him! ("The Art of Chesley Bonestell"). While I have a lot of contemporary colleagues whose work I think very highly of, there are two other pioneering space artists whose art I very much admire. Lucien Rudaux worked mainly during the 20s and 30s. He was by profession a skilled commercial illustrator and by avocation a highly regarded amateur astronomer. He brought an unprecedented realism and accuracy to astronomical art. The other artist is Ludek Pesek, who died in 1999. He was not only meticulously accurate but also brought a sense of naturalism to space art that no one had done before.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisO boy
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGreat article. Thank you for publishing it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLee Gimenez
www.leegimenez.com
Great article. Thanks for posting it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLee Gimenez
www.leegimenez.com
Magnificently imagined, rendered.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIs there a way to get prints of this work?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is nothing like a clear Earth blue sky, without those permanent rubbish arcs like on Saturn. Beauty is here too, we should look after our planet better!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, there is.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisVery good!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswow, i need to see things like this this
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisliving in costa rica now, and really missed reading and learning--this was amazing!!! will visit this site very often from now on.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou say Mercury is the hottest planet in the Solar System at 800 degrees. I thought Venus, at 900 due to extreme greenhouse effect, was the hottest.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou are correct. Temperatures on Venus are higher than on Mercury. We should have said "...one of the hottest planets..." and we'll correct the narration.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBetter than any SF story
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisVadxor
I was glad to see the dirty nitrogen geysers of Triton were included.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm glad to see the dirty nitrogen geysers of Triton made the list. I don't know if Hershal's crater is so important though, because it's rather static.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe can go to these places in person. See my essay at www.virtualspace.org.uk
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAbsolutely beautiful!!!! Would die to visit those places!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAbsolutely Beautiful!!!!! I would die to visit those places ;)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe wikipedia article on, "Peaks of Eternal Light," also states that the observations that confirmed these peaks were in eternal light were performed during the Northern Lunar summer and it is not known whether they are similarly lit during the Northern Lunar winter.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe same article also makes it clear that there is a great deal of doubt as to whether water ice (or any ice at all) exists at this site or other polar sites because similar data (which some claim indicates that there is ice) have been collected on other lunar craters which are not in eternal shadow.
Really, as a supposedly reliable source, don't you think SciAm could at least make a rudimentary check of the claims made in articles?
Amazing stuff! But as a mathematician, I've just gotta point out something about the Jupiter illustration. The red cloud would be about 8 km high, and the entire storm covers an area more than twice the size of Earth's cross-section. In the illustration it looks like we're seeing the corner of the storm as it curves out of our view. However, in light of the huge dimensions of the storm, this curve should be a lot less dramatic - in fact I think the storm would look like an unending wall, an "infinitely-long" storm front stretching all the way to the horizon! Mind-bending...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCan anyone back me up on this? Once again, awesome stuff!
This right here, tells me there is a God. A beautiful thoughtful God. Amen.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis tells me that there is a God., A beautiful , thoughtful God. Amen.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWow. Tremendous. Nice to rise above ourselves to experience such creations....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWatching stuff like this always depresses me because there is just so much stuff in the universe that humans will never ever ever get to experience or see :(
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnthony Pittarelli
I can just cry, GOd is here and he is not petty--creating, creating, creating and we have a conciousness to see.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell, I think we can do better than relying on Wikipedia! Although the Mountains of Eternal Light have not yet been discovered, they are far from impossible---and probably do exist. One of the several bases for my illustration was this paper: www.delta-utec.com/papers/ESTECMoonPaperFinal2.pdf
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAmazing! Ron is the best!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAmazing! Ron is the best!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUnfortunatly, one cannot hear lightning, only thunder.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo the sound clip of Saturn's "lightning" should be changed to thunder.
Unfortunately, one cannot hear lightning, only thunder.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs wonderful as this is, I could have only hoped the author to know better.
Grammer,pull the stick out. If a boy yells,do we have to say "I heard the boy's voice"? Could we not say "I heard the boy"?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat a great idea and fun. For more topical information go to;
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.educatinghumanity.com
Beautiful artwork, interesting information. Awesome and inspiring, to say the least.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI see this pictures and i like!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is amazing. Pherhaps this is true.
In the future maybe we go there!
Amazing images
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI love this kind of stuff. I put together some pictures from Astronomy Picture of the Day and played Great Gig in the sky in the background.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ng0YY9wG3ek
Weivrevo,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would like to point out that the caption only mentions the possibility of water ice not that it conclusively exists. True enough there have been studies that cast doubt on this but certainly did not absolutely rule it out either.
wow this is really cool, but i don't understand why many scientists are saying that mercury is too hot too far away too something for human beings to go there but then you're saying how tourists will go to mercury to experiance the sunrise/sunset, visit other planets' moons all this stuff- youre contradicting each other i really hope to see that stuff but its going to be expensive :/
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswow this is really cool, but i don't understand why many scientists are saying that mercury is too hot too far away too something for human beings to go there but then you're saying how tourists will go to mercury to experiance the sunrise/sunset, visit other planets' moons all this stuff- youre contradicting each other i really hope to see that stuff but its going to be expensive :/
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswow this is really cool, but i don't understand why many scientists are saying that mercury is too hot too far away too something for human beings to go there but then you're saying how tourists will go to mercury to experiance the sunrise/sunset, visit other planets' moons all this stuff- youre contradicting each other i really hope to see that stuff but its going to be expensive :/
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this