Near the end of June I was offered the chance to produce two digital renders for Tavi Greiner’s monthly ‘Our Night Sky’ report over at Astrocast.TV. A passionate stargazer and co-author of the blog: A Sky Full of Stars; Tavi also enthusiastically promotes outreach astronomy to fellow amateurs via Twitter, and FaceBook.
The latest episode of Our Night Sky focuses on citizen science and how members of the public can volunteer their time to make an invaluable contribution to real scientific research. Two projects in particular are highlighted: Stardust@Home and Citizen Sky; the leading project of the American Association of Variable Star Observers.
Stardust@Home are eagerly searching for microscopic grains of comet and interstellar dust obtained during a recent space mission, while Citizen Sky are hoping to unravel the enigma of a mysterious variable star that has puzzled astronomers for 175 years.
To visualise the concepts at the centre of these two projects I employed Photoshop CS2 as well as the combined power of Blender 2.46 and Terragen 2. The first of these renditions (above) is an impression of an interacting binary system on the verge of an eclipse, while the second one (below) depicts the fiery reentry of a spacecraft capsule on it’s return to Earth after visiting a distant comet.
The opportunity to support Tavi’s admirable work over at Astrocast.TV has been a welcome one, and I’ve enjoyed working on these illustrations which have opened my eyes to the vital role that citizen science plays within the scientific community. To quote the American anthropologist Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of committed citizens can change the world.”