Being a science illustrator with a strong science background (astronomy and physics and chemistry and paleontology, but principally on astronomical and astrophysical depiction and simulation) of over 45 years myself, yes, I DO feel I have full reason to express my distress over the deterioration of an artform close to my heart. From my point of view I think that it is impossible to be excessively passionate. Most every long-term veteran astronomical artist of exceptional skill would regard my comments as a relatively mild rebuke that isn’t anywhere near enough to set the record straight. It really IS that big of a problem.

Never mind the supposed ‘emotional depth’: what’s so is so. You’ll be hearing more about it in future. It really is a problem and it really is that emotionally charged.

Otherwise, Nigel, you are one of the precious few commentators here who actually have the rare and refreshing audacity to proffer a statement of authentic worth, relevenace and importance , and I thank you for being that authentic – and so graciously asking me about the topic I raised in a kind and genuinely curious manner. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for that… ..

Have you shared your feelings with the editorial staff of the relevant press?

Superb photo, well composed and taken.

It’s interesting to note that the moon’s orbital motion is not apparent in the 10 minutes (or whatever) during which this image was taken, but that the Earth’s rotational motion is. (Well, I think that’s interesting.)

On a night with a New Moon, in an area with next to no light pollution, would we still see a similar view of the sky, or are the nebulae only that visible because of the long exposure?

Well, I don’t know if those nebulae are naked-eye objects (and can’t look it up from work due to our “enlightened” web filter software), but if they were . . .

Probably all you would see is little faint fuzzy patches of whitish light. Even with binoculars, you’d probably still not see much colour, because there wouldn’t be enough light hitting your retina in one go to activate the cone photoreceptors that enable colour vision.

What I can be fairly sure of is that any significant amount of light pollution will render them very hard to see, even with a telescope or a long-exp photo (unless the light pollution is from low-pressure sodium lamps and you have a sodium band-stop filter attached to your telescope).

Superluminous eclipse image there. I love it.

If this isn’t chosen as one of the BA’s top 10 astronomy images of 2011, I’ll be very surprised!

Indeed…

Except, unfortunately, the state of rigorous and beautiful and scientifically accurate and just plain COMPELLING astronomical art has declined precipitously, especially over the last decade.

It’s an enormous problem: GREAT astronomical artists of considerable and long-demonstrated talent are being systematically marginalized by the draw of obtaining cheap crap.

If any arena of scientific illustration has suffered under this erosion more (and one can obtain some rough estimation by comparing the state of biological or paleontological art to astronomical art over the course of the last 50 years for a good idea of what I’m talking about), it is in the despicable trend of dismissing established and great astronomical artists simply because magazines and bureaucratically drenched outreach programs (either government or university) have somehow determined that IF any artwork is necessary for supplying an image which a given discovery or news release needs because the strictly scientific data or imagery consists of a single point of light or a spectrograph doesn’t supply the necessary oomph, they’ll almost inevitably ask some convenient (often hired staff) artist to supply a depiction under the direction of the science team or the team’s principle member to create an image that is most often – let’s face it, once and for all – a disgusting throwback which had been superceded by artwork by experts decades earlier.

BUT, BECAUSE a discovery is noteworthy if not spectacular, they then “NEED” a good artist to flesh out the discovery. Without it their discovery won’t pass polular muster. Right?

Grind up the ‘outreach’ machine…but don’t spend too much because established artists don’t really do a better job.

Alas, they increasingly often give the commission to some dolt just out of an art course who typically has no understanding of the astrophysics involved in order to inform his or her portrayal. The inevitable result for us readers is an endlessly cheezy series of depictions (say) of x-ray binaries that are copied (they might say, um, “inspired by”) from tiresomely dull if not hideously botched previous portrayals.

The so-called ‘State of the Art” of astronomical artistry – which had been growing from the 50′s to the early 80′s – has been thoroughly wrecked, reduced to a contemptible competition for some horrible median instead of always spiking anew toward possibilities that have been specifically and abundantly offered by numerous computational simulations.

With increasingly rare exceptions, we see almost nothing of that kind of bold artistic/scientific statement in artwork. What we see instead is an endless regurgitation of some general “concept” – and the portrayed concept is typically 20, 30 or even 50 years out of date. And the caliber of the artistry is increasingly horrible.

With nearly every news release we get now which involves artwork, we are greeted with a hideous recapitulation of what some previous artist had depicted. Artistic originality is skunked. WORSE, the SCIENCE gets skunked. The COMMUNICATION gets skunked.

And who is responsible for this state of affairs? Everybody who pretends that they know better how to visualize a concept than an expert artist who is also well informed on the science.

You know what magazine editors and ‘public outreach’ managers want? The CHEAPEST route to acquiring ‘NECESSARY’ artwork.

And they keep at it because almost nobody complains that the artwork they deliver sucks.

Mark this: ANY culture that attempts to shave off NECESSARY expense is a culture that is headed directly to self-extermination. And a culture that does not value expertise or authentic talent is a culture driving itself directly into the hole of extinction. I do not have to mention any of the myriad other ways we are shooting ourselves in the foot. Many of us already realize how we are so steadfastly approaching such a dispicable end.

Yes! Precisely! Bravo! More!