The first instance of a space discovery affecting art was likely 1608’s Somnium, a novel by astronomer Johannes Kepler about a trip to the moon following a pathway revealed by a demon. Ron Miller includes the curious story in The Art of Space, published this October by Zenith Press, which chronicles the history of artists interpreting the frontier beyond Earth’s atmosphere.
Tag: outer space
Posted inArt
25 Years of Photographing NASA’s Abandoned Launch Sites
Photographer Roland Miller has spent 25 years gaining access to abandoned NASA sites across the United States, capturing their history and strange imagery before they disappear.
Posted inArt
Lunar Mountains and Divine Spheres: 1,000 Years of Illustrating Outer Space
In a new book called Cosmigraphics: Picturing Space Through Time, published this month by Abrams, Michael Benson examines over a thousand years of mapping the great beyond.
Posted inBooks
The Sacrificial Glory of the Soviet Space Dogs
As companions in our centuries of wandering and settling, dogs have given their loyalty blindly, in both good and bad, as sacrifices to animal testing, as scouts to survivors on battlefields, as guardians to sleep by the door at night.
Posted inArt
NASA Unveils the Strange Suit Designed for Its Mars Explorers
If NASA astronauts land on Mars, they might not look very human at all.
Posted inArt
Meet the Afronauts
In the 1960s, while the United States and the Soviet Union were playing out their battle of who would make it to the moon first and so dominate the galactic skies, a former high school teacher in Zambia decided his country needed a space program.
Posted inArt
The Celestographs: August Strindberg’s Alchemical Shots of the Night Sky
In the 1890s, Swedish playwright August Strindberg photographed the night sky without a camera or even a lens. These “Celestographs,” as he called them, were both a folly and an innovative work of experimental art.
Posted inArt
The History of Space Travel in 10 Objects
As our shuttles have gone into retirement and we look to the future of what space travel will mean for human exploration, there are plenty of artifacts left behind with which to examine the successes and failures of our journeying into beyond our atmosphere.
Posted inArt
New eBook Turns Space into a Tonal Universe for the Visually Impaired
A new eBook is aiming to make that starscape engaging for everyone, including the visually impaired.
Posted inArt
A Lost Constellation: The Great Printing Press in the Sky
While searching for Orion or the Great Dipper, it’s easy to forget that these constellations are just the arbitrary imaginations of astronomers drawing with stars. While Ptolemy referred to mythology for the classic constellations, later stargazers turned to their own visual culture. Up in the heavens, one 19th century astronomer even saw a printing press.
Posted inArt
3D Photographs of Life on Mars, Taken by Robots
Now more than ever, it’s fascinating to look at the images we have from the Red Planet, and it just so happens that NASA has a whole collection in 3D.
Posted inNews
Scientists to Image Black Hole by Turning Earth into Giant Camera
The problem with trying to take a picture of a black hole is that it consumes everything, even the light around it. Now, a team of scientists is working to make the first image of a black hole by using telescopes around the world to look at its shadowy edge.