In Saturn’s Shadow

A drawing responding to the fragmented nature of astronomical images. Most of the images of space we see are complex composites of hundreds of raw images, stitched seamlessly and easily seen as natural snapshots. In this drawing, I tracked down the raw images corresponding to some of the better-known images published by the Cassini mission, in which the planet is seen backlit by the sun and the spacecraft was in Saturn’s shadow. I created my own mosaic-like version foregrounding the overlays, the gaps, and misalignments. I rendered the images in negatives to further abstract the result. The process made me think about how much our familiarity with Saturn’s image depends on centuries of perfecting imaging technologies. This work developed as part of Uncalibrated, my PhD practice-led research.