Otherworlds reveals visions of the solar system captured by robot spacecraft – ABC Online

Updated March 17, 2017 20:32:51

Michael Benson has painstakingly searched through more than half a century's worth of archives from robot space missions to curate a series of photographs showing off our solar system's far-flung spectacles.

The raw data was collected by the European Space Agency and NASA for research purposes, but Benson has channelled the best 64 images for his Otherworlds exhibition, now on at the Queensland Museum in Brisbane.

He described the exhibition as a visual legacy of six decades of space exploration.

Among the highlights, scars on Venus from lava flows and a 6.5-kilometre-deep canyon on Mars.

There is also a composite image of the first near-Earth asteroid discovered, which takes five hours for one rotation.

"These are extraordinary sights," he said.

"We've seen vast anti-cyclonic storms, three times the size of Earth, raging on the face of the largest planet Jupiter.

"And we've seen geysers of liquid water venting ceaselessly into space from Saturn's moon Enceladus, a kind of endless, upward streaming waterfall.

"When scientists go into the archives that contain the raw images from these planetary missions, [they are] looking for evidence to support their research; I go into the same archives looking for a different kind of discovery.

"Otherworlds presents the opening of the solar system to human eyes for the first time."

For six decades robot spaceships have swept through the solar system, returning data that has transformed our knowledge of the planets.

We now know Venus is the hottest planet, Uranus gets down to minus 195 Celsius and Mars is desolate and virtually airless.

Benson said crewed space missions took all the press, but it was the unsung robotic heroes which left him in awe.

Benson combed through thousands of black-and-white and colour photos from the robot space missions, many never before published, and spent countless hours piecing them together into seamless mosaic images.

They were then digitally edited to remove any tell-tale signs of the jigsaw puzzle montage.

The first image in his exhibition was taken in 1967, and the most recent taken by the New Horizons spacecraft when it swept past Pluto in 2015.

"Our machines go into the border of known and unknown, they are defining that border," he said.

"And they have witnessed alien worlds so eerily strange, or for that matter hauntingly familiar, that they have forced us to re-evaluate our own experience here on Earth.

"The show of prints makes the case that the visual legacy of planetary exploration is an artefact of our times that may prove to have a lasting significance.

"In the last half century we have vaulted right through the Sistine Chapel ceiling and have witnessed the real thing the heavens."

Queensland Museum chief executive Suzanne Miller said Benson's exhibition truly represented the entanglement of art and science.

"[It is a] showcase of planets that most of us can only dream of visiting," Ms Miller said.

"Through the images, [you] can navigate the solar system from the comfort of the museum."

Otherworlds: Visions Of Our Solar System runs at Queensland Museum until July 2.

Topics: astronomy-space, space-exploration, science-and-technology, arts-and-entertainment, library-museum-and-gallery, photography, human-interest, brisbane-4000, qld

First posted March 16, 2017 11:55:19

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Otherworlds reveals visions of the solar system captured by robot spacecraft - ABC Online