The Art and Science of the Universe

Cultures across the globe have been looking towards the sky for millennia. Using nothing but the naked eye, ancient peoples detected patterns of movement of celestial objects and began to associate these movements with earthbound events like the Moon and the tides or the cycles of the seasons. Each culture saved this knowledge in the form of a calendar.

From the earliest of time, the study of Astronomy had a very practical, and then later, a very much scientific basis.

The Renaissance in Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries brought about a great rebirth of science and culture after the Dark Ages. The early work of Dutch lens makers at this time led to the development of optical microscopes and telescopes. In the hands of people like Galileo, such technology produced the first systematic search of the night skies to catalog these celestial objects.

The Renaissance was also a time of great progress in the arts. Painters recognized the geometry of perspective to produce more lifelike, 3 dimensional scenes. The technique of Chiaroscuro used the application of light and shade to further enhance the realism of the works.

The study of Astronomy seemed more aligned with the sciences than the arts.

For the next few centuries at least.

The technology of astronomy surged ahead, with larger and higher quality telescopes being produced. Larger numbers of more distant and fainter objects were being discovered and cataloged in the form of large books, and in the early 1900’s, black and white negative glass plate images.

Since astronomers were scientists, their interest in color was restricted to the study of specific wavelengths of light. The spectrum of light emitted by a celestial body could be broken down into its individual wavelengths to discover the chemical composition of these far away objects.

As detection technology improved, astronomy expanded to include non-visible radiation such as infra-red, ultra-violet, radio waves, x-rays right through to gamma rays. Each type of radiation brings with it, specific details about its source. Visible light can show us dust clouds inside nebulae while infra-red light can look through dust clouds to see normally invisible details behind the dust.

Today we live in an age where the massive amounts of data collected by numerous space-based and terrestrial telescopes is publicly available to all – both scientists and artists.

This book aims to explore the artistic aspects of the wealth of astronomical data collected by space-based telescopes like Hubble and the James Webb, from research grade observatories located on high mountain peaks in Chile and Spain, through to amateur astronomers like myself (Arc) with our modest equipment in our backyards under the dark skies of Australia.

But how can Science and Art meet together? What could be the result of this mix?