A report on the talk given by Greg Smye-Rumsby at the OAS meeting on 25 June 2025
Throughout history, speculation about the heavens has encouraged artists to sketch,
paint and model their responses. OAS President Greg Smye-Rumsby – a staff
member of the Royal Observatory, but also a graphic artist and communicator –
presented us with a wealth of images that had resulted.
He began with a 5000-year-old image of an eclipse scratched into a rock in an Irish
burial cairn. Next was the 1676 depiction of flight to the moon in a book “The Man in
the Moone” by the Bishop of Hereford. Moving on to the 19th-century engraving
“L’atmosphère”, published by Flammarion, Greg showed how it illustrated the
developing understanding of the mechanics of the cosmos.
From early days there was a need to understand seasonal cycles, and this drove
theory and practice in the development of astronomy. To begin with, illustrators were
prone to project terrestrial scenes onto poorly grasped science and observation.
Lowell’s Martian canals was a good example.
Greg showed how science fiction stories and magazines spawned fabulous pictures.
But there were also examples of how gifted engineers like Russell Porter (of Palomar
Observatory fame) produced striking depictions of cosmological scenes.
Greg’s regular asides, castigating the “Flat Earth Society”, provoked lively responses
from the audience.
Another aspect of the links between astronomy and art arose in the development of
the logos of national space bodies, including the ubiquitous Nasa “worm”, we
learned.
Greg rounded off his address by showing off some of his own illustrations, and
explaining how a time-pressed graphics artist could adapt everyday items to produce
dramatic and realistic images.
Andrew Ramsay