I Liked the Picture Before It Was a Painting…

A few weeks ago I was browsing some of my old digital artwork, and came across the second piece I'd ever done. The first piece was pretty much the result of me discovering digital artwork and throwing a whole bunch of things together without a pre-set purpose, so this piece is what I consider my first “serious” attempt at realizing a vision. I thought for sure I'd posted it on this blog years ago, but a thorough search failed to turn it up, so for (what I think is) the first time, here's the image:

“Fictitious Solar System 2”

This is…uh, “Fictitious Solar System 2,” going by the file name. Yeah, names weren't exactly my strong suit back then. (Or maybe still!) As you can see by the date in the corner, I made this back in 2008, back when the number of known exoplanets wasn't yet in the thousands and they were still exciting and new. It's based on the common “Hot Jupiter” type of exoplanet, which made up a disproportionately large amount of the early exoplanets found simply because they're the easiest to find.

Hot Jupiters are a type of planet we don't have in our Solar System (and one no one predicted beforehand), where a gas giant like Jupiter or Saturn orbits extremely close in to its host star, often having orbital periods measured in just a few days. (As a reminder, the closest planet to our Sun still takes 88 days to complete one revolution.)

In the picture, we see a red star with a gas giant in stark silhouette in front of it. Of course, it's actually a bit ambiguous: is this a red dwarf, main sequence star with a hot Jupiter orbiting extremely close in? Or could it be, perhaps, an ancient red supergiant which has left the main sequence, “at length, grown old and swell’d to bulk enormous,¹” and this planet is actually progressing on an orbit the size of Jupiter's? I don't actually remember my intent, so, uh, enjoy the ambiguity I guess!

Anyway, the actual point of this post is that it struck me, while looking at this picture, that it would make a pretty good painting, especially with the practice I've gotten in painting stars over the past few years. I actually still quite like the composition, though I won't copy it exactly. (I also like how, almost a dozen years ago now, I was already obviously having fun making the solar flares and prominences in the star's atmosphere.) I started painting the background for the painting version over the long Australia Day weekend last week, so watch for the painted version at some point in the future. A hui hou!

¹ –Nitocris, Belshazzar, Act 1, Scene 1.