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Seán Doran

@theseaning.bsky.social

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Don Davis@ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 3d ago

51 years ago I painted a trio of Viking related works for NASA HQ including the widely reproduced one of the landing on Mars. I have reimagined the Landing portrayal in updated form using digital methods of visualization and painting. I chose the same angle but with reality replacing anticipation.

This oil painting portrays the Viking 1 landing on Mars, which appeared in countless publications. The story of this work is relayed in an earlier post and is shown here for comparison with the new portrayal of this very view, showing the event as it would have appeared. This 1975 anticipatory painting was done with oils on a gesso smoothed 16 X 20 canvas panel, using traditional art methods including a tracing paper guide featured earlier. This work shows in retrospect my ideal of the 'spirit of space art', showing something of a summary of what is known of the subject while conveying what it is about the subject's known or theorized attributes that I find visually compelling. The new digital painting updates that visual impression with one based on our current knowledge. The new digital work was also done at the same size as this one was for possible printing purposes, 16 by 20 inches at 300 DPI. #Sciart In 1976 the pair of Viking spacecraft orbiter/lander combos were sent to Mars. Before Viking, Mars was still largely a place of our imaginations, an unknown that we wrote stories about then studied from Earth and space. The dominance of cratered terrain on the portions of Mars photographed by Mariners 4, 6 and 7 gave an initially Lunar impression of that world, which changed during the development of the Viking lander after Mariner 9 revealed the planet. The first landing was aimed for a flat flood plain, judged as a decent place to search for life. The landing date was July 4, however the intended site appeared too rough for comfort in the high quality orbiter photos, causing the landing to wisely be delayed. A smoother site further 'down stream' was found using photo and radar data. The landing proceeded quite nominally, a magnificent achievement that apparently accounted for what it had to and made it the first time. The first photo from the surface was a look at a footpad to see how solid the 'footing' appeared. Then a moderate resolution panorama of the surroundings was obtained, first showing the rocks, hills, dunes-and bright sky. The latter was my biggest surprise as a space artist. The adjustments to the color balance of the later photos were gradually narrowed down. The ubiquitous dust is planet wide, suspended in the air and coloring the sky a luminous tan ochre. This digital painting shows the view a meter above the surface seeing the lander briefly kicking up dust less than a second before touchdown with the footpads 1.4 meters high. The landing rockets were designed with many nozzles to disturb the surroundings as little as possible. The nearby disturbed dust resembles in color that of the sky. We are 6 meters away from the center of the lander. field of view is 60 degrees, we are looking Northwest with the Sun and Earth off the frame to the left. This is a digital art update of the pre mission oil painting I did for NASA HQ 1n 1975. #Sciart
Robert Simmon@rsimmon.bsky.social · 5d ago

This is a fantastic essay. Read it If you have any interest in satellite imagery. “Who to Trust, Google or the Russian MoD? In 2015, that was a rhetorical question. Not anymore.” By @henkvaness.bsky.social

Alison Killing@alisonkilling.bsky.social · 6d ago

This is wildly irresponsible of Google - allowing people to create AI generated satellite images. Satellite imagery has always been such a useful and reliable source because it came from reliable sources, but now Google is messing with it at source. www.digitaldigging.org/p/how-to-pla...

China Space Watch@chinaspace.bsky.social · last wk.

🚀🌕 Sunday, August 23rd at 12:00 AM UTC Is Lift Off for China's Chang'e 7 mission. Which will explore the Moon's south pole, targeting the rim of Shackleton Crater. Its main goal is to search for water ice hidden inside permanently shadowed craters—an important resource for future lunar exploration.

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Don Davis@ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 2w ago

When the Viking landing sites were well photographed, maps of the surroundings could be compiled. I made a grayscale overview based on comparisons between the two camera panoramas, and with reference to sample field maps. A color oil painting of the lander was then done incorporating such work.

This vertical view of the Viking 1 landing site is based on the surface panoramas, extrapolated from the cameras views, seeking to place the featured in reasonably proper relative distances from the lander. Such work was of course drafted and executed by hand. After the Viking mission two large format NASA Special Publications were especially valuable in later efforts to portray the Viking landing sites in Perspective. First, of course, was NASA SP-425 The Martian Landscape' with beautiful large reproductions of earlier Viking photos, and NASA CR-3568 'The Viking Lander Atlas of Mars' which displayed the derived locations of landscape features in 3D space, plotted in contour lines defined by the perspective of the two cameras. This is a low resolution view of an artwork done in an odd art medium, scratchboard with a gray dot screen printed on it as a basis for making white or inked marks. Several sheets of this were given to me in the 70s by Chesley Bonestell, encouraging me to play with them. He said they were old, so that could mean WW II or so. I used all but one for such Planetary work. I did maps with them of the sites of Vikings 1 & 2, Venera 9, and Venera 10. All those were published in Sky & Telescope magazine, and in their volume 'The New Solar System', which used my art through out the book. I also made an overview of where they thought Viking 1 was, which turned out to be incorrect. An unfinished one of the Lunar Orientale basin awaits completion, at the time I started it the Western portions of that basin were still poorly photographed and my drawing was going to be an improvement in the available imagery. Now it is quite well known so there is less incentive to finish it. #Sciart Viking 1 on Mars. This oil on illustration board painting incorporated my efforts to plot the lander surroundings in perspective, and of course knowledge of the final actual lander appearance. The nearest footpad is entirely buried in the powdery dust, a sight which would have certainly been alarming if that had happened to the footpad seen in the first photo! The large rock in the right foreground was nicknamed 'Big Joe'. Just to the right of the lander along the horizon is the upraised rim of a distant impact crater. The overall color of the scenery reflects mostly influence from initial contemporary sources. National Geographic published a Viking article which featured the kind of independent first class photo work they used to be known for in the early space age. Their color chart driven version of the Martian scenery tended toward the brick red, reasonably approximating the hues as if lit by a noon time Sun in a Terrestrial sky. This painting was initially done in a similar color balance to what they mostly used, then later I learned of the ambient sky etc contributions and overpainted the scene with an orange tan layer. The result color wise is something in between what it was and what it should be, but the scenery remains valid. The Martian sky was based on Viking camera images, whose truncated brightness near the top of the frame complicated portraying the actual sky brightness range. #Sciart
Stuart Atkinson@stuartatkinson.bsky.social · 2w ago

New panoramic view of The Clayborne* Range on Mars, as seen by Curiosity. (*that's just my nickname for this, honouring Ann Clayborne from Red Mars, but I'll keep using it until NASA either adopts it or bans me from using it!) Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/fredk/S Atkinson

Half a dozen images taken by the Mars rover Curiosity, stitched together to make a panoramic view of features on the horizon. Processor Stuart Atkinson has named this "The Clayborne Range" in honour of geologist Ann Clayborne, a character from Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. It is not a name used by NASA but he says he will keep using it and ask others to until NASA either adopts the name or bans him from using it!
Don Davis@ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 2w ago

After the 1st context panoramas, the next anticipated image was the first color photo. This arrived and was printed initially too blue, then the next adjusted image came out too reddish. Later work quantified the surface and sky colors in results consistent with the observations of later missions.

The first color photograph from the surface of Mars arrived about 24 hours after the landing as grayscale 'scans' of the landscape with the red, green and blue filters. The 3 component images came in with the red brightest and the blue the dimmest, which when initially combined appeared so red that they were skeptical of the colors. The initial hurried release of that image occurred 8 hours after the data was received. The intent was to make the sky a neutral gray, but during the photograph's mass printing from a master negative the color balance of that first batch somehow drifted toward the blue, giving an initial 'Earth like' impression to the scene and sky. This initial release (upper left) appeared on TV news and the covers and color spreads of many magazines. Later (lower left) A slightly 'over corrected' version emphasizing the reddish ambience was released. Later work with the digital files shows an approximation of the scene as if lit by noon sunlight with minimal ambient contribution (upper right) and an approximation of the scene with the ambient lighting from the bright butterscotch colored sky factored in (lower right). This is the closest to what eventual human explorers could see and photograph there with their own cameras. The initial prints were distributed, I was fortunate to get one which I still have, and a large color print was shown on an easel, which people were gathered at transfixed, staring at this first 'window' into Mars. High end color CRT monitors with that image were scattered across the press area. They were adjusted better than the prints, using separate RGB adjustments in the back. I got close to one monitor and someone warned me not to touch it, that someone had just gotten yelled at by Jim Martin for playing with the colors! I later learned more about this story, which contributed to a conspiracy narrative which the early internet conveyed that NASA was trying to hide the true Earthlike appearance of Mars.
Stuart Atkinson@stuartatkinson.bsky.social · 4w ago

I'm a little bit obsessed with this cable on Perseverance. In a landscape painted a million different hues & shades of red, brown & sepia, this is one of the only flashes of such beautiful, pure blue for many thousands of miles... Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/S Atkinson

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David Grinspoon@drfunkyspoon.bsky.social · 4w ago

OK my NASA friends, this sets the tone from the top. You don’t need to follow “rules” and should disobey directives that you don’t like. Go for it- do whatever the fuck you want! 🧪 www.cbsnews.com/news/nasa-ja...

NASA chief Jared Isaacman flew private military jets over D.C. for July 4th despite FAA disapproval

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman flew private military jets over D.C. in a flyover Saturday — with Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche as a passenger — despite safety objections from the FAA.

cbsnews.com

JayIsPainting 🍁@jayispainting.earthskyart.ca · 4w ago

I don't have room to display half of my available prints this weekend. But all of them will be available & 50% off. 7359-104st Side door. (See quoted video) 10-5 Friday - Sunday. #yeg

View of my gallery with a table of prints in front of a wall of prints.
JayIsPainting 🍁@jayispainting.earthskyart.ca · last mo.

Hey Edmonton! Are you going to be at Art Walk this weekend? Take a short walk south and come say hi at my first Open Studio in 2 years. 50% off paper prints. 25% off all originals. Live painting! Friday to Sunday 10am-5pm Please share and tell your friends! #yeg

PJ Holden@pauljholden.com · 4w ago

In case you missed the news, Terran Omega: The Ghosts of War my sci-fi ghost story drew to a close this week and you can read the entire thing for free at www.pauljholden.com/patreon it’s also been Nominated for an Eisner AND Harvey award and they can’t BOTH be wrong????

Welcome to Terran Omega: The Ghosts of War | PJ Holden

This is THE LANDING PAGE! If you've arrived here you've either been sent a link OR scanned a QR Code. In either case, hello! If you're wonde

pauljholden.com

Elizabeth Tasker@elizabethtasker.bsky.social · last mo.

The English press release with the first images of asteroid Torifune captured by the Hayabusa2 spacecraft is now live! (I translated, the ISAS PR lead checked it while practically running from the press conference, and someone at JAXA HQ stayed late enough to upload 😆 HIGH-FIVES ALL AROUND!)

JAXA | Hayabusa2 captures images of asteroid Torifune

Get information on the Hayabusa2 captures images of asteroid Torifune. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) performs various activities related to aerospace as an organization, from basic res...

global.jaxa.jp

China Space Watch@chinaspace.bsky.social · last mo.

🌌🪨🛰️ China's Tianwen-2 sample return mission is expected to arrive at the near Earth asteroid Kamo'oalewa tomorrow (July 4) at a distance of ~20 kilometres. Hopefully we'll also see the first images of the asteroid very soon.

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