Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Art That Captures the Beauty and Science of Space

Episode Date: December 20, 2016

Marilynn Flynn, Simon Kregar and Rick Sternbach are masters of space art. They talk about how their work furthers science and captures the imagination.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Podcast listeners, you still have time to join the big drive with that $100,000 matching fund and support Planetary Radio or any other major effort by the Planetary Society or the society as a whole. Find out more at planetary.org slash planetary fund. Thanks for taking a look. Here's the show. Capturing the beauty of the cosmos, this week on Planetary Radio. Welcome. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond. Space art. It has been with us in its modern form since at least the 1940s, when it was pioneered by the great Chesley Bonestell. Three current masters of the genre join us this week.

One of you will win work by one of them in this week's space trivia contest. Water on Ceres, a red dragon, and the National Geographic Channel's Mars series have captured Bill Nye's attention. If writing about planetary science is an art, Planetary Society senior editor Emily Lakdawalla is one of its greatest practitioners. Emily, you have just written about the Trace Gas Orbiter, that orbiter that did make it to Mars on the Chaparrali mission that the Europeans undertook. Tell us about the little bit of science that it's been able to do so far. I guess it may be the only science we're going to see for a while. That's right. Like most Mars missions, TGO will eventually be in a circular orbit around Mars, but they get there kind of slowly because rather than launching a really big rocket with a lot of fuel to immediately circularize the orbit, they take advantage of Mars' atmosphere in order to slowly change an initial highly elliptical orbit

into a circular orbit. And so that's really the main activity that's planned for Trace Gas Orbiter over the next year. But before they begin that aerobraking phase, they got just two orbits worth of science in just to make sure that all the instruments are still working. And included in that was this really fun image of Phobos. It really is. And I mean, it's not the clearest able. We'll talk about one that's a little bit sharper, but it is in color. Yes, it is in color, just as all of ExoMars Cassis images are going to be in color. And

it shows some really nice subtle color variations. It also shows a part of Phobos that we don't get to see very often. I don't exactly understand the orbital dynamics reasons why this is, but it's just not very common for spacecraft to get views of the trailing hemisphere of Phobos, the side of Phobos that faces the back of its orbit as it passes around Mars. And it's the part of Phobos that doesn't have grooves crossing it. And when I saw this picture, I said, huh, I don't think I've seen very many pictures like this before. You took us into the past, back to 2008, when you reviewed some of those previous images. That's right. The spacecraft that's taken the most best images of Phobos is Mars Express. But

for reasons I don't understand, they can't really seem to get the trailing hemisphere. And so in my searches for pictures of the trailing hemisphere of Phobos, it led me back to Mars Global Surveyors, Mars Orbiter Camera, and a very vintage-looking website from Mail and Space Science Systems showing their really gorgeous image of the trailing hemisphere of Phobos taken so many years ago. It is absolutely gorgeous, and it can be seen in this December 15th blog post that Emily has put up at planetary.org. Emily, thanks so much, and we'll look forward to Mars Science from TGO. Me too, Matt.

She's our senior editor, the planetary evangelist for the Planetary Society, and a contributing editor to Sky and Telescope magazine. Bill Nye is the CEO of the Planetary Society. Bill, great to have you on once again. I think we can start by talking about the biggest so-called asteroid, dwarf planet, really is what it is in our solar system, Ceres. You know, NASA was all about follow the water. It seems like it ought to be, find me a place where there isn't. That's exactly right. Mars is loaded with water. There's water on Mercury. There's water in the craters of the moon.

It is amazing. Yeah. It's an easy molecule, I guess, if you're a galaxy. And here you and I are, just lousy with water. It's crazy up there. It really is an amazing thing. I just think about my parents and their parents. They had no idea that there'd be this much water.

And does that affect the way you feel about your place in space, about being a living thing? If there's all this water everywhere and you and I are made of water, it just leads you, makes me think maybe there are other water-based life forms out there. Which, again, then I say cue the spooky music right there. I sure hope you're right. And next week, we'll talk more about this. Mars is lousy with water. And the whole idea has been to look for water and then look for signs of life. SpaceX is proposing to land one of its red dragon capsules, which is pretty much designed for this purpose on Mars.

And it would fly on a Falcon Heavy. Instead of having nine engines the way a Falcon 9 has, it's going to have 27 engines. And this is going to be how the Planetary Society gets LightSail 2 into orbit, is on a Falcon Heavy. Planetary exploration informs or advances human exploration and advances our search for life in the solar system. It's all tied together. It's not one of the others. Another great lesson to be learned. Mars is hard, as the old saying goes. Speaking of Mars is hard, Matt Kaplan, have you been enjoying the National Geographic Mars series? As it happens, as I mentioned to you, I have a blog post coming out about how much I have not enjoyed it. I love the documentary sections. Our own Casey Dreyer features prominently in those.

The fictional portions, no, I have not. What about you? Well, due respect, the characters are cheerless. And I'm not that invested in their survival on this alien world. Precisely. They just don't remind me of anybody I'd want to hang out with. But this makes the world go round. And I am not...

The worlds go round. Get it? I didn't until then. I am not going to move to Mars to live in a hab with doors that can be opened by one person and open outward. I'm just not. F your eye, is all you're saying, for your information. That's a little science fiction mistake.

And the guy giving the pep talk during the countdown was weird. It's all so dramatic, so overbearing, just so... It's not my cup of tea. Nah, it's kind of dreary for exploring a new world. And making discoveries that change, of course, human history. Yeah. Anyway, that's great. Hey, have a good holiday weekend.

And we'll catch up with you next week. Thank you, Bill. And we'll review the year that was, 2016. Thanks very much. Isaac Newton's birthday is coming up. Happy birthday, Ike. That's Bill Nye. He's the CEO of the Planetary Society. He joins us most weeks here.

Next up, space artists, people who really inspire our visual imaginations about what's out there. You've heard a lot of my conversations with scientists and explorers at this year's meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences. Now for something not completely different. Space art takes us where human eyes may never travel and even shows us sights no telescope or robot may ever see. Sometimes it goes beyond the strict limits of reality to put the substance of the cosmos in human terms. With the sessions ended on one evening during DPS week, three artists made the short walk from the Pasadena Convention Center to the headquarters of the Planetary Society,

so that we could talk about how and why they do what they do. We've had artists on the show before, but not three at once, and so this is a special pleasure. Welcome to all three of you. Glad you could come here to the Planetary Society headquarters. Just as the Planetary Science Gathering of the Year is taking place up the street there. I want to let people hear who you are, first of all. Hi, I'm Marilyn Flynn.

And I'm Rick Sternbach. And I'm Simon Krieger. There is an art gallery as part of this show, which I think is a pretty important thing to have. Oh, absolutely. This art gallery, art show, you can say, was really the brainstorm of Dr. Jamie Malarno, who now works at JPL. She got her start at the Lunar Planetary Laboratory in Tucson, where she ran the Art of Planetary Sciences shows, inviting the public in to see not only what planetary scientists were doing art-wise, but to have the public involved developing art, creating art,

based on that as well. And those were highly, highly successful. I'm very fortunate that she was able to bring that model here to DPS to be able to present that to the planetary science community. Marilyn, you've got some work over there as well. Yes, I have two Pluto paintings in the exhibit. And I'm going to come back to those because I really loved those. They were terrific work.

But it's also the historic value of those. In terms of the history of space art, Rick, I know you didn't make it into this one because you had something else that you were up to. But I'm glad to have you here, old friend of the Planetary Society. Well, thanks to be here, Matt. Yeah, I was trying to get enough time to put some art in the show, but I had to put a slideshow together for the Goddard Space Flight Center. So, you know, I couldn't get my prints made up. I couldn't get them framed. So, you know, next time. But you had a sellout crowd,

I hear, at Goddard. They had a joint science and engineering colloquium. A lot of Star Trek fans. And the show that I did for them was NASA and Star Trek, the parallel threads of technology inspired by the space program and, you know, technology today inspired by Star Trek. Yeah. Having worked on the show, they felt I was qualified to speak about that. You know, I discovered just today that you have your own Memory Alpha entry, Memory Alpha being the sort of Wikipedia of Star Trek. I'm there, yeah, you know, as a worker on the franchise.

My career started out doing astronomical art. I did things for Sky and Telescope and Astronomy Magazine. I took a 15-year detour by working for Star Trek. That wasn't entirely a detour, but I see what you mean. Marilyn, how did you get into this? Let's go way back. Basically, I wanted to be an astronaut when I was what you mean. Marilyn, how did you get into this? Let's go way back. Basically, I wanted to be an astronaut when I was a little girl. But back then, all the astronauts were male test pilots.

And I had an artistic talent. So through various twists and turns in my life, I ended up painting space art. But I think the defining moment for me was switching. I used to go to Star Trek conventions and see all the art shows there. And I thought, well, I can do better than those bad drawings of Mr. Spock. But what really changed for me was when Ron Miller's book called Space Art that was published by Starlog came out. And that was the first time I ever saw space artists, their biographies at the back of the book. Usually when you would see space art paintings,

you would just see them accompanying an article in National Geographic, but you never knew who these people were who were doing the paintings. And when I saw there were actual people and read their biographies, and I think you might've been in that book too, I thought, hey, that's exactly what I want to be doing.

So I kind of dropped everything and turned into a— I was working in theater at the time, and I just dropped that, and I went back to college, brushed up on my landscape painting skills, and became a space artist. I'm glad you did, and I bet these guys are too. Simon, so how did you get into this? Well, you know, I remember seeing the same space art book from Starlog magazine, as well as the space art that was in Omni magazine. Bill Hartman had published books with Pamela Lee. I collected those. And I

never took my art craft seriously. I had a career in hospitality for many, many years. And it was probably 10 years ago that I decided I wanted to focus on science education and how to do that effectively. And it just kind of became a natural fit, you know, to move into the space art, to be able to inspire people. Ran with it ever since. So that's so interesting. Art for art's sake, but you had something else in mind. And it's very much in line with the mission that we have here at the Planetary Society. And it has everything to do with this intersection of science and art. Absolutely. Space art, you can define it as part inspiration. I guess that raises the question,

what do we do? What is space art? Where is that intersection between science and art? And I kind of look at the methodology as quite the same. I do a considerable amount of research before I start a painting, whether it's a portrait or a planetary landscape. And I think that's fairly indicative of anybody within our collective group of artists. Yeah, Marilyn and Rick seem to agree. They're nodding off to the side there. Tell us about this piece behind us here.

Oh, like so many people, I grew up watching Cosmos. And Carl Sagan, just an absolute personal hero. And I've painted Carl several times. personal hero. And I've painted Carl several times. This piece that I've donated to the Planetary Society is, to me, iconic Carl Sagan. You know, you have Carl there. It's a nighttime scene. The stars are in the background. He's got the twinkle in his eyes. Classic red turtleneck is on. And juxtaposed against this in front of it, is elements from the Voyager record. Yeah. Which is, in a very real sense, his forever legacy.

I mean, that will last, outlast us all. Maybe humanity's legacy. Maybe humanity, yeah. Absolutely. And yeah, there's the hydrogen symbol in the distance to the pulsars, and it's a gorgeous piece. Absolutely. Thank you so much, because you've just given us that today. Oh, absolutely.

It belongs here. Of all the places it's shown, this is where it's at home. I'm glad you feel that way. Marilyn, I said I wanted to come back to you because of those two pieces that I saw over at the show. Yes. Looking out at Charon, that hard to even call it a moon of Pluto, from the surface of Pluto. And I was struck by how much that was in the tradition of great space art that excited me so much as a kid. And then, of course, there's a certain name that comes up,

Chesley Bonestell. Yes. I didn't get my initial influence from Bonestell's paintings. I had gotten inspired by some unknown, unnamed illustrator who had done some tiny little landscapes that were surrounding a solar system map. I think it came in a National Geographic magazine or something. And I used to just spend hours when I was really little just imagining I was walking on those strange surfaces spend hours when I was really little just imagining I was walking on those strange surfaces and exploring those strange landscapes. And then from there, I was a big fan of Ludwig Pesek's works that were in National Geographic. And yeah, Rick is nodding. And he had a quality to his paintings that was very artistic. It wasn't just a cut and dried illustration. And again, it made me feel like I was really walking on those surfaces of these strange alien worlds or the moon or Mars.

And that's the sort of feeling I'm trying to bring in my own works. What you've given us in these paintings, as gorgeous as the images are that New Horizons has returned of the actual Pluto, it cannot, could not give us the view that you gave us. We may not have that view in a photograph for hundreds of years. I mean, who knows? And that's what space artists are here for. Yeah. And obviously you, I'm going to assume, based a good deal of what you gave us in those paintings on the data, the images that came back from New Horizons. Yes. Yeah.

And the scene that I painted actually is on the side we didn't get a whole lot of very good images of. So I was able to use more artistic imagination to fill in the blanks. But I mean, now we've got so many pictures of the surface of Mars and Moon that photographs are replacing a lot of the works that space artists used to do. Now space artists are also starting to paint a lot of exoplanets because, of course, we'll never have pictures of the surfaces of those places for a long time. That does seem to be now where I see the most science-based space art. It's these exoplanet vistas, which are largely imagination. We don't really know, but at least we're beginning to get a little bit of science. Yeah, you're not as constrained when you're doing a painting like that.

And in the beginning, we didn't know what Enceladus looked like or anything at all. It was just a fuzzy blob. So now, with the planets and moons we have better images of, you have to be more careful about the science to get that right. You can't go painting unicorns on Jupiter or anything. Well, you could. Well, yeah, but... There might be a certain market for those. That's a different genre.

Yeah, yeah. Our conversation with three outstanding space artists will continue in a minute. This is Planetary Radio. Hello, I'm Robert Picardo, Planetary Society board member and now the host of the Society's Planetary Post video newsletter. There's a new edition every month. We've already gone behind the scenes at JPL, partied at Yuri's Night, and visited with CEO Bill Nye.

We've also got the month's top headlines from around the solar system. You can sign up at planetary.org forward slash connect. When you do, you'll be among the first to see each new show. I hope you'll join us. Hi, I'm Kate. And I'm Whitney. We've been building a youth education program here at the Planetary Society. We want to get space science in all classrooms to engage young people around the world in science learning.

But Kate, are you a science teacher? No. Are you? Nope. We're going to need help. We want to involve teachers and education experts from the beginning to make sure that what we produce is useful in your classroom. As a first step, we're building the STEAM team. That's science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics.

So teachers, to learn more about how you can help guide this effort, check out planetary.org slash STEAM team. That's planetary.org slash STEAM team. And help us spread the word. Thanks. Bye. Bye. Welcome back to Planetary Radio.

I'm Matt Kaplan. We are visiting with Marilyn Flynn, Simon Krieger, and Rick Sternbach, three of the finest space artists working today. You'll hear how you can see their fantastic work at the end of our conversation. Rick Sternbach may be best known for his towering contribution to the look and feel of the Star Trek canon. Like his colleagues, he believes the best space art is closely entwined with science. Scott Bolton, who's the principal investigator for the Juno mission, he showed us this, for the first time anywhere, this beautiful image of Jupiter.

And it started with an image of the surface, the cloud tops, but then it peeled it away, showing us like onion skin layers underneath, and that he was able to show us that the bands on Jupiter actually go down hundreds of kilometers. They based this not on an image that they were able to get of those lower layers. This came from a microwave instrument that just returned data, no images. It just returned data, no images. So they had to find an artist to illustrate, to turn that data into something that we could visually appreciate. And when I said to Scott, wow, science and art, he said, yes, emphatically yes. Well, very good. I'm very, very glad to hear that kind of response.

that kind of response. A scientific visualization, getting the art out to show in a more accessible form what the instruments are trying to tell us as astronomical artists, even graphic artists who are, like today, very, very facile with CGI programs. They can work with the investigators and show, okay,

what is this instrument telling us and how do we put that in a form that an audience can understand? I think that's a wonderful collaboration. And some of us have done that with these projects in the past and also worked to bring some of these discoveries to a wider audience, as we did in the original Cosmos series. A number of us were at JPL right there during the Voyager encounters, and it was an exciting time. We were watching images paint onto the screens. We were watching images paint onto the screens. We stood there watching and looking at things like crater fields on Ganymede. And nobody had ever seen them before.

And we were there. And, you know, we as artists and model makers, you know, we translated as much as we could into visual effect sequences for the miniseries. It was just an amazing time. Yeah. Marilyn, Simon, either of you want to get in on this? Absolutely. I was just going to comment that we live in this era now that's as equally exciting. With the probes around Mars, around Cassini, around Saturn that is ending its life, but has brought back such amazing imagery. Juno, we've had the probes around Mercury and Venus. It's an unparalleled

time, in my opinion, to be in planetary scientists and to be an artist. To comment something on what Rick had brought up earlier in Maryland, and I think we've touched on this a little bit. Part of our initial mission as artists, as space artists, were to help with that visualization, like your experience today. In addition to that, because we get these wonderful images back from all these different missions, which kind of replaces what we've done in the past. which kind of replaces what we've done in the past. You know, it kind of puts the emphasis on inspiration now, where our art is transforming slowly, not only as representational art,

like standing, like Marilyn's wonderful piece, standing on the surface of Pluto, but equally pieces that use data to create art, very much like Dr. Jamie Milano's, I don't know if you saw her thesis, which was on crater depths on the moon where she took a 3D laser printer and cut all the craters out on her doctorate, on her thesis, and created this 3D map.

I didn't realize that that was actually her thesis, but that was wonderful. Yeah, just amazing work. And there are things like that where you're incorporating data and inspiration, and generations see this now. We have, I guess, there is still a split with having more artistic representations of the landscapes and more illustrative ones that are trying to show like the layers and Jupiter's clouds that you were talking about and stuff like that. And I think even with the planets that we're

getting really great photography back on, for me now, you know, I'm interested in taking those images and putting a more artistic spin on it where if I was actually sitting on the planet's surface with my paint pots and trying to evoke the feeling, like if I actually got to go to Mars and I was actually sitting there, that is how I would paint that scene, like in plain air or in plain vacuum, I guess. I'm thinking also of another piece of yours that I saw, which was standing on Enceladus, watching the plumes. And it really did look like those 19th century artists standing in Yellowstone watching Old Faithful.

Yeah. And we have often had comparisons with our group to the Thomas Moran paintings of the artists that used to get to go out on those expeditions to the West, those lucky guys. And we're just hoping someday somebody will take us on a space mission with them. That's got to happen. We need to get artists out there. We need to get artists on the red planet, that's for sure. Yes, I'll sign up right now. You know, actually, we have artists that have been out there.

I mean, Alan Bean. That's exactly what I was going to bring up. Nicole Stote, Ron Guerin are all artists. Alan Bean is just a wonderful artist. Oh, absolutely. I don't know if you're familiar with Nicole Stote, Ron Garan are all artists. Alan Bean is just a wonderful artist. Oh, absolutely. I don't know if you're familiar with Nicole Stote's work. No, I'm not. She works with children, cancer patients, and it's called the Spacesuit Project.

I may have gotten that wrong. Please excuse me. But they take little swatches of color or canvas that the children paint on, and they quilt work, put it on a spacesuit, and then they donate these spacesuits to these children's institutions. It's absolutely beautiful work. Wow. Yeah. There have been a lot of astronauts, and there are a lot of scientists who are artists.

I think of people like Dan Durda, who's a member of your organization, the IAAA, which we'll talk about in a second, who is a very accomplished artist, but also a very accomplished scientist. And it seems like this intersection all comes together in their brains. Yeah. Some of the guys got in line twice when they were handing out talent. That's not fair. I didn't get either one. I must have slept in that day. Rick, you sent me a link to an article in Long Reads, and we'll put this link up on the show page at planetary.org. It was called Space Art Propelled Scientific Exploration of the Cosmos, but its star is fading fast. Subtitle, The Huge Hidden Cost to Severing the Bond

Between Art and Science. And you thought it would be stimulating reading. It was, but it seemed overly pessimistic to me. It seemed fairly pessimistic to me on first reading. And then I went back and I looked at it again. And I actually came away thinking that, you know, there were some very upbeat parts of it. The space art field or movement or whatever you want to call it has been evolving. I think for a lot of us, we look at space art in terms of, okay, where is it going to be used?

is it going to be used? And the use of space art, the use of paintings and drawings, blueprints and pre-mission diagrams and that sort of thing, they are all evolving. And, you know, maybe one or two of these art forms may not be used as much as they were in the past. But I don't believe that space art is at all in decline. You know, the fact that we're seeing a number of these art shows connected with science, I think that shows that it's still rather healthy. I hope so. What do the two of you think? I mean, do you see challenges in your line of work? Is there less available, or do you think it's healthy? It's different.

When I first started out, there were a lot of actual real print magazines that would hire artists to do space art, and that's virtually dried up now. I think Life magazine with the famous series done in the 1950s with Man in Space. Or was that the Disney series? But Collier's, yeah. Coll series? But Collier's, yeah. Collier's, Collier's, sorry. Or even magazines that are still in print aren't using as much art as they used to. It's definitely changed, and there's a lot more emphasis, I think, on animation.

You're disagreeing, Rick? I don't know, but it seems like, to me, I'm seeing more of that than traditional space art paintings. Simon, is the business of space art healthy? You know, I'm kind of the new kid on the block as far as space art goes. And it's been my experience that, and I approach the art rather differently than Marilyn or Rick do. I try to convey more inspiration, less representational, if you will. You know, my specialty is in portraits, and I've done that for many years. But to me, it's about conveying the feeling of being there. Well, I guess Marilyn does,

everybody does the same thing. I don't know, I'm devaluing my work. Anyway, I think what I really wanted to say was in my case, I find that it's just growing by leaps and bounds. I mean, the interest in what we're doing is phenomenal, particularly where it comes to the more creative intersection between art and science. science. Yes, there's less of an interest in the direct representational type of work, stuff that was inspired by the Hudson River Valley School, for example, only because it's being outsourced by NASA now or insourced by NASA and these institutions. So there's less of a need for them to buy it. But there's a huge collector market looking for these types of work. I think there was a Bonestell that just went for a million. Oh, my gosh. At auction. So there's definitely... That's encouraging. Yeah, there's definitely an interest in it. But yeah, that's true. Marilyn just pointed out,

unfortunately, he's dead. And we as artists like to make money while we're alive. So... I can't blame you. I know you two, Rick and Marilyn, you're founders of this sort of umbrella group for people who do this stuff that the three of you all do and many others called the IAAA. One of you, tell us about that organization. Okay, well, the IAAA, International Association of Astronomical Artists, we formed in the early 1980s. A number of us were showing our art at Planet Fest 81. Planetary Society Celebration. Right, right. And this was not long after we wrapped up production on Cosmos.

The Voyager missions had happened at Jupiter. A number of us converged at Planet Fest 81. Many of us had never met before. A number of us just wondered, I think it was, You know, a number of us converged at PlanetFest 81. Many of us had never met before. A number of us just wondered, I think it was, you know, me and Bill Hartman and I think Ron Miller and Don Dixon, could we form an organization that would benefit artists doing this sort of work? We had all been, you know, kind of working in isolation. Shortly after PlanetFest 81, IAAA formally organized. We have conducted a number of workshops in various exotic locations, analogs for planetary locations. We are here now in 2016 still promoting the field. You told me a story once about a caravan of artists going through Death Valley. The workshop that we had in 1983, and Marilyn, you were there,

we had a number of us in a number of cars driving along. I think we were heading toward Furnace Creek, maybe. You know, it was telepathy because we all looked out the window to our left. There was a landscape that looked exactly like Mars, exactly like what we had seen in things like the Viking lander photography. And we all pulled over and we stopped and we screeched to a halt and we all got out, and we looked. We called it Mars Hill. Over time, Mars Hill became an official label on the maps.

Yep, I've actually seen that. The Park Service seems to have approved. Well, also, on that same trip, we went to a volcanic crater called Yubihebe. Just as a funny little side note, speaking of analogs. While we were there, we had all these geologic analogs, but we didn't have any astronaut analogs until Rick pulled a spacesuit costume out that he had cobbled together and put it on and was gracious enough to pose for us all. So you're a model slash artist.

Yeah, we had our little astronaut model. Andy Chaikin also put on the costume and sort of a paper mache helmet. It looked ridiculous in real life, but we used it as a photographic reference. Bill Hartman did a fantastic little painting of an astronaut climbing up a sand dune on Mars, just using that space-suited figure. It was a very simple suit, but using that suit as a reference figure. These days, we have all manner of astronaut figurines to work with and CGI astronauts. If we want to put a figure anywhere in a painting, you know, we have the tools. Yeah. Andrew Chaikin, of course, that wonderful author and historian of particularly human

spaceflight, but spaceflight overall. I wish I was in this club. Let me go back to you, Simon. If there's a budding artist or scientist artist out there listening to this, and they had no idea that there was a club for people who do the kind of stuff you do, I mean, what would you recommend to them about making a profession out of this? Oh, I'm not sure I can give advice about that. Yeah. You know, I have a funny, funny quick story. My father, many, many years ago, who was a famous watercolor artist in New York City. When I was going to high school,

they asked him to come in and speak at the art class. And he walked into the room, stormed up front and looked at all the children and yelled, none of you will make any money ever at art. And that stuck with me. No, just, just follow your passion. I mean, really, that's it. If you're interested in space art, take a look at IAAA.org, see if it's a good fit, and definitely, you know, join the membership, join the ranks. It's an absolutely amazing organization, amazing group of people, unlike anything I've ever experienced before. So I can't plug it enough. I don't think you'll get any disagreement from your colleagues to the side here. Well, as long as we're giving out websites,

what is yours? My website is simonkrieger, S-I-M-O-N-K-R-E-G-A-R.com. And of course, we'll put all of these up on the show page as well at planetary.org. Marilyn, your turn. My website is tharsisartworks.com. That's Tharsis as in the beautiful area on Mars where the volcanoes are.

Spelled T-H-A-R-S-I-S-A-R-T-W-O-R-K-S.com. And Rick? Well, I have an outdated website that I am threatening to update, ricksternbach.com, R-I-C-K-S-T-E-R-N-B-A-C-H. Well, we're happy to give you more incentive to update that website sooner than later. I got one more thing here that you guys handed me when I was over at DPS today. The art of planetary science at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona, in February of 2017. Is this going to be a good place to go if you're just a fan like me to see space art?

Absolutely. This will be the fourth Art of Planetary Science show that the LPL has put on, Lunar Planetary Laboratory. Last year, I believe, they had 250 different individual pieces of art from almost 100 artists. It draws in not only the planetary sciences community, but the entire University of Arizona and the Tucson community. I believe we had artists as far away as China last year that contributed art to the show. It's an incredible amalgam of planetary sciences and art and celebration. I hope I can make it. Thank you for the work that you do. I think it does the job of helping to bring the science of the solar system and beyond

back to us in a very personal way and in a very inspiring way. So I sure hope that all of you and all of your colleagues get to keep it up, folks. And thanks for coming over to join us on Planetary Radio. Space artists Marilyn Flynn, Simon Krieger, and Rick Sternbach, with me at Planetary Society headquarters last October during the Division for Planetary Sciences meeting. during the Division for Planetary Sciences meeting. Time for What's Up on Planetary Radio.

Bruce Betts is the Director of Science and Technology for the Planetary Society. And he's here. He's on Skype. He's going to tell us about the night sky and help me give away another copy of Extranaut. Welcome back. Hey, Matt. Good to be back. How are you doing? I'm great. Yeah, I'm looking forward to the holidays. I just had a weekend in the mountains, and the sky was beautiful. Man, was Venus bright.

Yeah, I turned it up because I knew you were going to be in the mountains. Thank you so much for turning it up to 11. You're welcome. You know, people can see Venus really easily, whether you're in the mountains or in a city. It's bright enough to see as long as you don't have clouds. Early evening, look over in the west. It's that really bright star-like object. If you look to its upper left, much dimmer and a little bit reddish is Mars.

And in the pre-dawn sky, over in the, actually it's rising almost in the middle of the night now, is Jupiter in the east and high in the east or even in the south by pre-dawn. And on the morning of December 22nd, the moon will be partying near Jupiter, making for a lovely sight if you're up at that time of day. We've got a moon party coming up later here on the segment. We've got more moon in this week in space history. In 1968, the first humans orbited the moon in Apollo 8. And that was just great. I mean, it was almost a surprise.

Not really, of course, but man, that was a fantastic event. All right, we move on to random space fact, random space fact, random space fact. Giddy up, Rudolph. John Glenn, continuing the John Glenn facts. John Glenn was the earliest born American to orbit the Earth. He was born July 18th of 1921, earlier than any other American who orbited the Earth. Wow. And had a good long run, as we discussed in some detail

last week. Wow. Did indeed. All right as we discussed in some detail last week. Wow. Did indeed. All right, we move on to the trivia contest, back to the moon. I asked you, what did Gene Cernan, the last person to walk on the moon as part of Apollo 17, say before he entered the lunar module for the last time? So, very specifically, his last words while outside a spacecraft and on the moon. How'd we do, Matt?

Noting that specific language, very, very important. Most people, and we did get a lot of entries, most people gave us those official words he said before he climbed back into the lunar module. But a lot of people, and some of them exclusively gave us the last words he said on the surface before liftoff. gave us the last words he said on the surface before liftoff. And the actual last word, as we heard from Robert LaPorta in Dix Hills, New York, didn't come from CERN and it came from Harrison Schmidt. It was the word ignition. That makes sense. That's why I didn't ask about

those words. That was mostly pilot speak. We also got this from Stephen Georges. Stephen, no, I'm sorry. The last words were not so long, and thanks for all the fish, but thanks for trying. It's Hector Rodriguez. Hector Rodriguez in Brazil, one of our many international listeners, and quite a few of them in Brazil, who gave us this. And this is sort of the abbreviated version. America's challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow. And as we leave the moon at Taurus Litro, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return with peace and hope for all mankind. It's nice. Isn't it? And correct, I hope, too. And correct, indeed. Well, congratulations, Hector. You are going to get that copy of Extranaut, the game of solar system exploration designed by Osiris Rex, principal investigator Dante Loretta, one of Good Housekeeping's

best board games of 2016, along with a 200-point itelescope.net astronomy account, the worldwide network of telescopes that you can train on the moon or any place else you want in the universe, and a planetary society, Rubber Asteroid. And Hector, by the way, he's a computational chemistry student down there in Brazil. And he says, discovering the show, one of my great discoveries this year. We got all kinds of extensive history of these last words. I'm going to thank everybody. And a lot of people also said what terrific last words those were from

Gene Cernan, as opposed to what he said on the module, which I think you've also got. Not in front of me. But yes, there's some debate between the official transcript and other claims of what they said shortly before lifting off from the moon. I take it you have it. It might have been, let's get this mother out of here. Or something a little more prudent. Not supported by the official transcripts, but supported by some of the astronauts' memories. Yeah, including apparently Gene Cernan himself.

But yeah, it was... We'll leave it at that because it's so much more colorful. We're ready to go on to the next one, and we have a fantastic prize. Excellent. I have a fantastic question. I don't know, but it's pretty cool. As we said, John Glenn was the earliest born American to orbit the Earth.

Who was the earliest born human to reach space? Now, this is a little tricky. Use what's usually taken as the official definition of space, although it is somewhat arbitrary, of 100 kilometers altitude. Who was the earliest born human to reach space? Go to planetary.org slash radio contest. You're going to have to work for this one, but the prize is worth it. You've got until Tuesday, December 27th

at 8 a.m. Pacific time to get us the answer. Somebody with the right answer, chosen by random.org, is going to get an absolutely beautiful print from tharsisartworks.com. That is the website that belongs to Marilyn Flynn, one of the space artists that we just heard from on today's show. It is her rendering her conception of basically standing on the surface of Titan, looking up at Saturn through those thick clouds. It's an 8-inch, roughly 8 by 16-inch print direct from Maryland, already mounted, and somebody's going to get this fantastic prize. What the heck, we'll throw in a

rubber asteroid as well. Not bad, huh? Not bad at all. Very nice. Yeah. We are finished, I think. Alright, everybody, go out there, look up in the night sky and think about dolphins. Thank you, and good night. Yes, and that was Bruce Betts. We're going to thank him for all the fish, too. He's the Director of Science and Technology for the Planetary Society, who joins us every week here for What's Up. Happy holidays, Bruce. Happy holidays, Matt. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California,

and is made possible by its tasteful members. Daniel Gunn is our associate producer. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which was arranged and performed by Peter Schlosser. I'm Matt Kaplan. Clear skies.