Search Astronomers Without Borders

How I Became a Space Artist

Title: Moon by Earthlight by David A. Hardy (1956) Caption: Earth, four times bigger than the Moon in our sky, sheds its blue light over a lunar crater, seen from its central peak. The sun is rising on the distant ringwall. Scenes like this are heavily influenced by Chesley Bonestell, who believed that because there is no air or weather on the Moon the mountains would be as jagged as the day they were born. He did not take into account the billions of years of micrometeorite impacts, or the constant expansion and contraction caused to rocks by the extremes of temperature, both high and low. As a child, I was fascinated by photographs in books of the Moon’s craters, Saturn’s rings, volcanoes, tornados, eclipses, aurorae – anything strange and unusual. I could never afford a telescope and didn’t have the technical skills to make one, but I did observe through a friend’s, and soon began to wonder what worlds like Mars and Jupiter, seen only as flickering discs, would be like if one could go there. In 1952, when I was 16, I had an exhibition at my grammar school (the UK equivalent of high school): “Interplanetary Paintings by D.A. Hardy, 5a”. Actually, I liked Science and Art equally, and when I left school I was guided into the former, having been told “You can’t make a living from Art.” My school friends used to laugh at me for saying that we would land on the Moon in our lifetimes... it seems that both... Read More..