Starship

Starship

On the 20th of April 2023, the first complete Starship/Super Heavy rocket system took to the skies for the first time.

For a very long time I wanted to paint Starship in all its glory, as a basic idea as a silhouette, just in black, white, yellow and brown. Due to other tasks and circumstances, I ran out of this idea, so I used the supplies I had at home. This is how the colours ended up on black canvas, as well as the Super Heavy Booster 7 and Ship 24 photographed during the first test flight.

The Super Heavy Booster 7 was a 69 meter long first stage equipped with 33 sea level optimized Raptor engines with a total thrust of about 74.4 MN.

The Ship 24 is the second stage of the rocket system, 50 m high and 9 m in diameter. It was equipped with 3 Raptor engines optimised for sea level and 3 Raptor engines optimised for vacuum, with a total thrust of 14,7 MN.

The main goal of the mission was to launch the rocket, which is almost 120 metres high, into space safely and to survive the ascent phase and the maximum aerodynamic load (Max-Q). After the stage separation, S24 would approach its first orbital speed (28,000 km/h) with the help of its six Raptor engines and, after three quarters of its low-Earth orbit, would terminate in the Pacific Ocean, about 150 km north of the Hawaiian Islands. Meanwhile, the first stage would have made a controlled descent into the Gulf of Mexico.

Although the test flight did not achieve all its objectives, it did achieve the most important one: Starship left the launch pad in one piece and made its maiden voyage as the largest and most powerful vehicle ever, reaching an altitude of 39 km.

40×80 cm stretched canvas, acrylic, various techniques.

If you like the painting, you can buy it.

Starship first test flight
Sminthuridae

Sminthuridae

Without a subject, I experimented with bokeh on this canvas, it just stood there for a while with its little spots.
I thought a lot about what would give the image essence, where to put the focus. Finally I went from the solar system and spaceships to collembolas, so I searched the net and found some wonderful photos by Andy Murray. I painted one of them with metallic-acrylic colours. 🙂

30×30 cm, canvas, acrylic, various techniques

Sminthuridae - collembola
Red shift

Red shift

Red and blue shift of an imaginary spiral galaxy, fantasy image.

I built the dust rings with texture paste for days (it was a good experience), so that I could spray the two dominant colours, red and blue, from a flat angle. At the same time, I tried to achieve an effect that was pleasing to the eye in itself, because the original idea would only really work if the image itself was in motion or the position of the viewer changed – which can be achieved with the vertical suspension, but then it would look weird from the eye. 🙂

I have done a lot of small dioramas with this technique and it is very effective. I’ll keep experimenting with the larger ones. 🙂

30×60 cm stretched canvas, acrylic, structure paste, various techniques.

If you like the painting, you can buy it.

More information about the “red shift”can be found on the ESA website

Imaginary spiral galaxy
Marsquake

Marsquake

A complex image, in which I have tried to represent the strongest seismic activity on Mars detected by the InSight.

40×40 cm, stretched canvas, acrylic, structure paste, various techniques.

The InSight probe

InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) landed on the 26th of November in 2018 on the Elysium Planitia on Mars. Its mission was originally planned for a 2-year duration, which was extended for another 2 years in January 2021.

On 19 December 2018, it deployed its seismometer, SEIS, on the surface of Mars (shown at the bottom of the image, which I painted using the photo by InSight). It placed 1.6 metres away using the robotic arm of the probe. SEIS was able to detect movements up to the atomic level. It could also measure a quake of magnitude less than 4 from 1600 km away, which is not possible on Earth, mainly due to background noise from the oceans.
Thanks to this equipment, seismic activity was detected on the red planet for the first time on 6 April 2019.

The seismometer measured more than 1,300 seismic events during its mission, and more than 50 of these gave a clear signal for the mission team to identify the epicentre of the quakes. The largest events originated from Cerberus Fossae (shown in the top of the image  and based on the image of the ESA Mars Express spacecraft’s high-resolution camera), a region that shows signs of geologically young volcanism – within the last two million years.

The instrument has been used to detect several strong marsquakes. The record was a magnitude 5 event in May 2022. A seismogram (based on a NASA/JPL – Caltech diagram) is shown in the centre of the image. The shock waves from the vibrations reverberated around the planet for at least six hours.

The lander detected several large quakes of magnitude 4 or stronger in September 2021.

InSight has helped to reveal the internal structure of Mars and to gather new information about the planet’s three main layers – the crust, the mantle and the core – which has significantly changed our understanding of the planet’s interior.

Its mission ended on 15 December 2022, after 1440 Martian days (sol), or 4 years and 18 days in Earth terms. Its scientific measurements and observations have given scientists many years of work to do, and will tell us even more about Mars’ present, past and subsurface geology.

More about the mission

The painting is available for purchase

The sound of the marsquake

The strongest quake on Mars measured by the InSight spacecraft.
Voyager 2: A visit to Neptune

Voyager 2: A visit to Neptune

In addition to new ideas I decided to finish the paintings I had started so far.
I started this image in May 2018, the shade of blue in the background has changed since then, but the idea of Voyager has remained the same throughout.

The Voyager 1 and 2 space probes were built for a five-year lifetime. Voyager 2 was launched on 20th of August in 1977, 16 days before Voyager 1, and both have now reached well beyond their original destinations, with Voyager 2 becoming the only spacecraft to have studied all four gas giants of the Solar System at close range. Voyager 2 is in 45th year, 5th month and 22nd day of its mission, and travelling 19 930 968 333 km from Earth at a speed of 55 347 km/h through the interstellar space.

More about the mission: link

50 x 40 cm, stretched canvas, acrylic.

If you like this painting, you can buy it by contacting me via one of the contact details in the CONTACT menu!