The Art of the Cosmos: Beholding the Universe through Illustrations

(Image credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA); Wikimedia Commons)

The universe is a canvas of indescribable beauty. Yet we can’t fully understand the feeling of seeing it in its raw form since we don’t have the capability to venture out into space. We can only rely on the data that our equipment and instruments capture and send back to us. Even then, we haven’t been able to scratch the surface of how wonderful the universe is. For now, we have to be content with the depictions artists create showing us what space looks like. Still, if the photos and drawings are beautiful in themselves, imagine the real thing.

Some may think that science and art don’t work well together. The rigidity of scientific methods contrasts that of art’s free-flowing nature. But in reality, they complement each other. Many scientific concepts are too difficult or too abstract for us to understand. If you think about it, even the concept of a black hole was up in the air until recently when photos taken by the Event Horizon Telescope revealed the first actual image of a black hole. Before that, we had to rely on how astronomers described them as well as how artists visualized and illustrated them.

In his time, Galileo Galilei had to draw sketches of the stars, the moon, and all the celestial objects he saw through his telescope in order to make records of his observations. These illustrations enabled him to make accurate measurements and descriptions for further study.

Galileo drew on art techniques like perspective and chiaroscuro — a manner of depicting light and shadows that was relatively new at the time — to show the lofty mountains and craters on the moon’s imperfect surface. Using geometry and his drawings as a measuring stick, he was even able to measure their heights with astonishing precision. Two years later, Lodovico Cardi, also known as Cigoli, a prominent Florentine painter, immortalized Galileo’s sketches of the moon in a fresco that still stands in the Santa Maria Maggiore, a Basilica in Rome.

Today, with the help of more powerful instruments like the Hubble Telescope, we are able to gather enough data to produce pictures of space like the one above, the Pillars of Creation which show the process of stars being born amidst the interstellar gas. Other space missions also seek to capture images in order to use them to study the surface of planets, the atmospheric condition, and even the possibility of extraterrestrial signs of life.

By Jeremiah