Astronomy Art Offers a Closer Look at the Universe

Astronomy art isn’t just about beautiful depictions of celestial bodies. It also offers a glimpse into the science behind them. Artists have long used their skills to convey the mysteries of outer space—from recording cataclysmic events like comet strikes to plotting out patterns. But it wasn’t until the advent of space flight programs after World War II that astronomy art really took off as its own subgenre. Today, dedicated amateur astronomers produce breathtaking images of the cosmos using a new artistic technique called astrophotography. And a handful of professional artists are still at the forefront of the field, producing images that are both scientifically accurate and visually stunning.

The history of space art starts with petroglyphs and decorative objects that date as far back as 1600 BCE, followed by the emergence of astrology, which in turn gave rise to a range of visual representations of stars and planets. The first widely published astronomical artworks were commissioned by the French astronomer and science popularizer Camille Flammarion for his massive 1884 book Les Terres du Ciel, or Sky Lands, featuring woodcut illustrations of extraterrestrial scenes.

Throughout the nineteenth century, a number of astronomer-artists made their names with illustrations in popular magazines and books, including Scriven Bolton, who created innovative renderings of the moon using plaster models and whose work appeared in numerous publications on both sides of the Atlantic; Abbe Theophile Moreau, who produced detailed star maps of the night sky; and Lucien Rudaux, who painted what he thought the surfaces of other planets might look like. Rudaux’s 1937 illustration of Saturn (as viewed from its moon Rhea) is one example that still holds up, even with the much more detailed knowledge of the planet that we now have.

After the war, artists began to document space flights as they happened, and a handful of them became famous for creating realistic paintings of the experience. The most notable of these was the American painter and astronomer Charles Bonestell, who drew on his background in special effects for Hollywood to create some of the most famous and realistic astronomy-themed works of all time. His work in Life magazine, from 1944 to 1945, is a prime example.

Today, the art of space is still evolving, as a growing number of amateur astronomers use digital imaging software to capture their own interpretations of the cosmos and share them online. And a few of these have even been commissioned by NASA to help illustrate the latest research in areas such as exoplanets and planetary geology. But despite its growing popularity, there’s no denying that space is an extremely difficult subject to represent accurately in a handmade medium. That’s why so many astronomers, both professional and amateur, continue to devote their talents to the task of creating a better picture of what’s out there. We’ve gathered some of our favorites here, from the desolate terrain of Venus to a fiery landscape of Mercury.