Have you ever wondered what extrasolar planets look like? Or imagined boarding a spacecraft flying by a strange world, or standing on an alien moon’s surface looking at a giant planet rising above the horizon?
‘Imiloa Astronomy Center proudly presents Carlos Alvarez, an astronomer at the Keck observatory, who will share the results of a collaboration between the W.M. Keck Observatory and award-winning exoplanet artist Adam Makarenko to create a science-based artistic rendering of a variety of exoplanet scenes.
“Exoplanet Imaginarium: Where Imagination and Science Meet” is slated for 7 p.m. Friday, Dec. 13. Admission is $8 for ‘Imiloa members, $10 for non-members.
This collaborative project showcases visualizations of alien worlds brought to “life” and embarks on a deep space visual journey to extrasolar planets that either were discovered or characterized using Keck observatory data. Serving as an interface between science, technology and the arts, this project is designed to fulfill the ultimate dream of anyone curious about extrasolar planets.
Since science facts can only go so far in revealing the full nature of exoplanets, the collaborators explored the unknowns with creativity and imagination by way of artistic conceptions. This artistic work is comprised of hand-crafted planetary models made from half spheres of plaster, plastic or foam. The models are painted with a variety of different paint mixtures to achieve the desired effect, such as a gas giant or a rocky world.
The completed planets are then suspended in front of a black backdrop, illuminated by a single light source and then photographed. The result gives the work a tangible quality, instantly transporting the viewer to a distant world outside the solar system.
Alvarez’s presentation will illustrate the process of translating scientific facts into artistic renderings of exoplanets. He will show some specific examples of extraordinary alien worlds that challenge the understanding of how planetary systems are put together by the laws of physics. The spectacular diversity of alien planetary systems shown in this work will be used as a proxy to illustrate the state-of-the-art instrumentation and observational techniques used by professional astronomers to detect and characterize extrasolar planets.
Born in Spain in 1969, Alvarez graduated from the Universidad del País Vasco in Spain with a major in solid state physics and from the Universidad de La Laguna in Spain in astrophysics. He received his doctorate from the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom in 2002 with a thesis on outflows from massive young stellar objects.
From 2002-04, Alvarez served as a post-doctoral researcher at the Max Plank Institut für Astronomie in Heidelberg, Germany, working on high spatial resolution observations of massive star forming regions.
He proceeded to work as a support astronomer with the 10-meter Gran Telescopio Canarias at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory in La Palma in the Canary Islands in Spain. Since September 2015, Alvarez has been an astronomer with the W.M. Keck Observatory.
For tickets to this event, call 932-8901. For more information, visit www.imiloahawaii.org.
‘Imiloa Astronomy Center is located at 600 ‘Imiloa Place in Hilo at the University of Hawaii at Hilo Science and Technology Park.
