Space art and knowledge

Hi,

Something I was wondering about lately is how space art is perceived by
those who are knowledgeable about astronomy and space in general. How do
you perceive space art that does not accurately represent the current
astronomical knowledge? Good, bad?

I'm curious about this because my own space work is based mostly on
imagination rather than scientific knowledge of outer space. What are
your thoughts? Thanks.

--
_ARTEW_ Space art
http://www.art.eonworks.com/gallery/...gallery_1.html

On Sun, 01 Feb 2009 18:28:10 +0100, Dawid Michalczyk
wrote:

Something I was wondering about lately is how space art is perceived by
those who are knowledgeable about astronomy and space in general. How do
you perceive space art that does not accurately represent the current
astronomical knowledge? Good, bad?

I'm curious about this because my own space work is based mostly on
imagination rather than scientific knowledge of outer space. What are
your thoughts? Thanks.

Well, LOTR is one of my favorite books, but I don't mistake it for
reality g.

If space art represents itself as scientifically accurate, and it isn't,
that's not a good thing. If it is clearly fantasy, there's nothing wrong
with that. Personally, I do find it kind of jarring to see space art
that has elements that are _obviously_ unreal, however. Your images
aren't in that category (except for showing galaxies and nebulas as
colorful, but that's an exaggeration I don't find unreasonable-
grayscale skies would get kind of boring after a while).
_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

Chris L Peterson wrote:
On Sun, 01 Feb 2009 18:28:10 +0100, Dawid Michalczyk
wrote:

Something I was wondering about lately is how space art is perceived by
those who are knowledgeable about astronomy and space in general. How do
you perceive space art that does not accurately represent the current
astronomical knowledge? Good, bad?

I'm curious about this because my own space work is based mostly on
imagination rather than scientific knowledge of outer space. What are
your thoughts? Thanks.

Well, LOTR is one of my favorite books, but I don't mistake it for
reality g.

If space art represents itself as scientifically accurate, and it isn't,
that's not a good thing. If it is clearly fantasy, there's nothing wrong
with that. Personally, I do find it kind of jarring to see space art
that has elements that are _obviously_ unreal, however. Your images
aren't in that category (except for showing galaxies and nebulas as
colorful, but that's an exaggeration I don't find unreasonable-
grayscale skies would get kind of boring after a while).

Indeed, NASA does the same thing with Hubble images - most of them are
false-color, with contrast exaggerated.

On Sun, 01 Feb 2009 13:49:53 -0600, "Jorge R. Frank"
wrote:

Indeed, NASA does the same thing with Hubble images - most of them are
false-color, with contrast exaggerated.

Sure. The "cheat" in the case of most space art is displaying objects
with color in what is intended as a naked eye rendition. If we were
actually in one of these scenes, with a normally lit planet surface,
moons, etc, things like nearby nebulas and galaxies wouldn't show much,
if any, color. But that wouldn't make for so striking an image, so the
fiction is tolerable in most cases.
_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

On Feb 2, 2:25*pm, Chris L Peterson wrote:
On Sun, 01 Feb 2009 13:49:53 -0600, "Jorge R. Frank"

wrote:
Indeed, NASA does the same thing with Hubble images - most of them are
false-color, with contrast exaggerated.

Sure. The "cheat" in the case of most space art is displaying objects
with color in what is intended as a naked eye rendition. If we were
actually in one of these scenes, with a normally lit planet surface,
moons, etc, things like nearby nebulas and galaxies wouldn't show much,
if any, color. But that wouldn't make for so striking an image, so the
fiction is tolerable in most cases.
_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatoryhttp://www.cloudbait.com

Mainstream science is what spendy infomercials of hype and eye-candy
is all about, as certainly it's not about sharing the best available
science or whatever the subsequent truths.

There's far more public funded science evidence that's systematically
excluded than included, especially whenever it comes down to
relatively local stuff that might actually matter.

~ BG

Chris L Peterson wrote:
On Sun, 01 Feb 2009 13:49:53 -0600, "Jorge R. Frank"
wrote:

Indeed, NASA does the same thing with Hubble images - most of them are
false-color, with contrast exaggerated.

Sure. The "cheat" in the case of most space art is displaying objects
with color in what is intended as a naked eye rendition. If we were
actually in one of these scenes, with a normally lit planet surface,
moons, etc, things like nearby nebulas and galaxies wouldn't show much,
if any, color. But that wouldn't make for so striking an image, so the
fiction is tolerable in most cases.
_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com
Also the false coloring is used to show different bands of radiation,
like red/green/blue for three different Infrared channels,
or show different colors for hydrogen/oxygen/etc detected.
Those pictures are no fake, and show useful scientific info.
And they look nice to

Chris L Peterson wrote:
If space art represents itself as scientifically accurate, and it isn't,
that's not a good thing. If it is clearly fantasy, there's nothing wrong
with that. Personally, I do find it kind of jarring to see space art
that has elements that are _obviously_ unreal, however. Your images
aren't in that category (except for showing galaxies and nebulas as
colorful, but that's an exaggeration I don't find unreasonable-
grayscale skies would get kind of boring after a while).


I thought the images looked very nice, especially this one:
http://www.art.eonworks.com/gallery/...-200801-TH.jpg
(where would space art be without Saturn?)
Nicest part though was a complete lack of any dolphins or whales in the
images, a thing that got way too popular a few years back:
http://i152.photobucket.com/albums/s...dolphins-2.jpg
http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t...asy/Whales.jpg

Pat

On Feb 1, 5:28*pm, Dawid Michalczyk wrote:
Hi,

Something I was wondering about lately is how space art is perceived by
those who are knowledgeable about astronomy and space in general. How do
you perceive space art that does not accurately represent the current
astronomical knowledge? Good, bad?

I'm curious about this because my own space work is based mostly on
imagination rather than scientific knowledge of outer space. What are
your thoughts? Thanks.

--
_ARTEW_ Space arthttp://www.art.eonworks.com/gallery/space/space_gallery_1.html

William Blake got it right,empiricists draw you down to the page hence
the blank celestial background -

http://nibiryukov.narod.ru/nb_pinaco...aac_newton.jpg

The responses here are mostly personal attacks,financial chestbeating
mixed with a bit of magnification and they think this is astronomy !.

The same feeling for astronomical methods and insights are present in
all wothwhile and creative endeavors of humanity such as in art and
music but it rare now to find people now who can bypass the novelistic
junk placed before the wider population under the name of 'astronomy'.

"Dawid Michalczyk" wrote in message
k...
Hi,

Something I was wondering about lately is how space art is perceived by
those who are knowledgeable about astronomy and space in general. How do
you perceive space art that does not accurately represent the current
astronomical knowledge? Good, bad?

I'm curious about this because my own space work is based mostly on
imagination rather than scientific knowledge of outer space. What are your
thoughts? Thanks.

--
_ARTEW_ Space art
http://www.art.eonworks.com/gallery/...gallery_1.html

My honest thought:
You don't give a ****, you just want to promote your own crap.
Well, you did ask...

On Feb 1, 10:28*am, Dawid Michalczyk wrote:

Something I was wondering about lately is how space art is perceived by
those who are knowledgeable about astronomy and space in general. How do
you perceive space art that does not accurately represent the current
astronomical knowledge? Good, bad?

I'm curious about this because my own space work is based mostly on
imagination rather than scientific knowledge of outer space. What are
your thoughts? Thanks.

Obviously, it is _preferable_ if space art is scientifically accurate.
Thus, the space art of Chesley Bonestell, for example, is well loved
because, in addition to its beauty, he was meticulous in researching
the scientific knowledge available at his time. (Some of that
knowledge, though, was imperfect as we now know.)

There are many impressive types of space art that are not strongly
dependent on scientific fact; as long as you point the lit side of any
moons towards the nearest sun, and so on, there isn't that much to get
wrong in many cases. And if you want to be the next Boris Vallejo
instead of the next Chesley Bonestell, well, that too is a path to
fame and fortune.

John Savard