Figure 8.
catastrophic collisions in an evolving young
planetary system. While working on this art I
felt I was aboard a time machine, transporting myself into the past to witness two planets crashing into each other, spewing chucks
of rock.
Two Earth-sized bodies
collide near HD 23514.
Credit: Gemini
Observatory/AURA;
artwork by Lynette Cook.
View artwork online here.
Topping that, an “Outer Limits” mystery: the
case of the TYC 8241 2652 system. Several
years ago it had all the characteristics of solar
system formation. Today, however, the warm
dust thought to originate from collisions of
rocky planets is nearly all gone. What happened to it? For this news article I developed
two images that show the “before” and “after”
views. These were provided via the Observatory’s website as stills and also as an animation (viewable here).
Figure 9.
The dusty TYC 8241
2652 system as it might
have appeared several
years ago when it was
emitting large amounts
of excess infrared
radiation.
Credit: Gemini
Observatory/AURA
artwork by Lynette Cook.
Communication is Key
It is said that “too many cooks spoil the broth.”
This usually means that the more people in
the mix when it comes to input and decisionmaking, the more complicated the process
becomes (also the more diluted and tasteless
the results). To my delight, however, those
with whom I’ve worked on press release artwork have been stellar (no pun intended).
Able to narrow in on the most important elements of the science and what needs to be
shown — and also able to communicate the
finer details of size, color, texture, object relationships, and more — I’ve felt that these
collaborations have gone exceedingly well,
without the huge bumps in the road and frustrating impasses that can occur when individuals gather to move toward a common goal.
While good communication is necessary
with Peter and the astronomers, as far as the
rest of the world is concerned, this process
moves in secrecy. One mustn’t spill the beans
about a release before its time. When someone outside our group asks what I am working on, I bite my tongue and reply with an
answer that ranges from “Oh, nothing much”
to “Just a ‘star thing.’”
January 2015
Recipe for Success
Figure 10.
One process that can help reach the goal
of creating successful art is to treasure hunt
for existing photos and other imagery that
might have a bearing on the new art. A
prime example is using Voyager photos of
Jupiter as a resource to depict exoplanets of
several Jupiter masses. This said, no photo or
existing art will be ideal, and this is exactly
the point: I am illustrating something that
has neither been seen nor illustrated before.
2014 Year in Review
GeminiFocus
Most of the surrounding
dust has disappeared —
based on observations by
the Gemini Observatory
and other groundand space-based
observatories. Credit:
Gemini Observatory/AURA;
artwork by Lynette Cook.
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