Voyager
Voyager on ArtBlocks
Voyager is part of the ArtBlocks Presents collection. Drop occurred on April 17th 2023.
Available on the secondary market :
Inspiration
Voyager 1&2 have been launched in 1977. They were sent to explore the 4 giant gaseous planet of our solar system, thanks to an alignment configuration available once every 175 years. Wikipedia
Io and Europa moons with Jupiter
Voyager 2. Feb. 1979. NASA/JPL.
This image is the inspirational source of my project. A giant planet, moons with the size of our Earth looking so small... giving the scale of the Jupiter planet.
I was 6... when this image has been taken. Real people have discovered this image for the first time...
I want to give the same feeling with my project... to give the feeling to discover the first image of a new world for the first time. In fact, you'll not get a single image, but many different views of your planetary system (thanks to the liveMode, see below).
Voyager is a pass ticket giving access to infinite views of your planetary system...
NARRATIVE
Voyager 1&2 are the farthest objects from Earth created by man. Now travelling at the speed of 17km/s, it will require tens of thousands years at least for it to reach other system.
In "Voyager", I imagine Voyager approaches a planet and its moons and send back the image to Earth.
In reality, they will never approach anything close enough to be capture by camera by far. Distances in the Universe are difficult to apprehend.
VIDEO
I've made a short video using the Voyager that have already been minted on ArtBlocks.
Sound on and loud. Fullscreen.
Youtube link : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Du4FqU68bBQ
FEATURES : Mission Phase
The "Mission phase" features gives an information on the distance to the planet.
I used the NASA description of the different phases : NASA Phase Description
In a flyby operation, Observatory phase (OB) begins when the target can be better resolved in the spacecraft's optical instruments than it can from Earth-based instruments. This phase generally begins a few months prior to the date of flyby. OB is marked by the spacecraft being for the first time completely involved in making observations of its target (rather than cruise activities), and ground resources are completely operational in support of the encounter. The start of this phase marks the end of the interplanetary cruise phase. (...)
Far Encounter phase (FE) begins when the full disc of a planet can no longer fit within the field of view of the instruments. Observations are designed to accommodate parts of the planet rather than the whole disc, and to take best advantage of the higher resolution available. (...)
Near Encounter phase (NE) includes the period of closest approach to the target. It is marked by intensely active observations with all of the spacecraft's science experiments, including onboard instruments and radio science investigations. It includes the opportunity to obtain the highest resolution data about the target. (...)
Observatory (far) Observatory
far encounter
Coming closer and closer...
Moon near encouNter
In this one, a moon appears on the first plan.
Planet near encounter
Closest distance to the planet. Maximum details on the planet texture.
FEATURES : SPACE
Standard space environment consists on a dark sky with some stars placed randomly.
There are 3 types of feature family that have an impact on the visual layout :
Milky Way, Nebula and Cluster
Small features (Eclipse, Comet...)
Gravitational Wave
Milky Way
Milky Way is the view of our galaxy as we can see it in clear nights. It's a compound of gaseous parts with bright star population.
Nebula
Nebula is composed of gas that blocks light (and appears dark) or diffuses light (and appears bright).
Cluster
Cluster comes with 2 possibilities : Hyades and Coma Berenice. These are 2 closests star clusters. They contain lots of stars... I interpreted this with dust like structure and more stars. The difference between the two is light (depends on parameters, but Hyades is little more extreme than Coma Berenice).
Milky Way
Hyades
Nebula
Coma Berenice
Small features.
White dwarf : fading core of a star, not too luminous => Wikipedia
Eclipse
Supernova : star explosion => Wikipedia
Comet
Einstein Ring : a complex structure => Wikipedia
Einstein Cross : same origin => Wikipedia
Magellanic Clouds : the two dwarf galaxies visible with the naked eye (southern hemisphere) => Wikipedia
Nova : a bright event affecting a white dwarf => Wikipedia
Unknown structure
Unclassified : probably an asteroid, but not sure...
Disclaimer : some objects look real (comet, eclipse, Magellanic clouds...) some have been enlarged to be seen given the scale (Einstein ring and cross, asteroid like), some are just creative interpretation but would not look like that (nova, supernova...) and some have never been seen...
White Dwarf
Eclipse
Supernova
Nova
Einstein Ring
Einstein Cross
Magellanic Clouds
Comet
Above : the objects in the Voyager artwork. Below : real images of the same objects (the astrophysical scale is not respected, Einstein cross and rings should be so small you can't see them giving the camera aperture).
FEATURES : Gravitational wave
Gravitational waves are produced by the collapse of binary systems involving black holes and/or neutron stars. They produce waves that distort the space structure itself. My interpretation is quite extreme, but these are the most energetic events in the Universe...
FEATURES : Colors
Voyager is roughly 3/4 Monochromatic and 1/4 Bichromatic. Blue for Cold planets, Red-Orange for Warm planets and Red for Hot planets.
Cold
Warm
Hot
FEATURES : Planet Category
I followed a nomenclature used to characterize exoplanets (and added a few style myself like TransNeptunian).
TransNeptunians, Neptunians and Jovians are gaseous planets. Jovian contains stripes like Jupiter while Neptunian are homogeneous.
All other are Telluric planets. I've decided to give the names to the ones that look more what I imagined they could be.
Cold, Warm and Hot are usually related to the scale of the noise I used to create their texture (colder => larger scale and hotter => smaller scalle). For Jovian, the hotter, the larger the number of stripes.
There is no physics, just my inspiration on what they could look like.
Gaseous planets
Cold Jovian
Hot Jovian
Warm Neptunian
Cold Transneptunian
Telluric planet
Hot Superterran
Warm Terran
Warm Subterran
Warm Miniterran
Interactivity
Save
press S : to save the current image in png.
High Resolution
press 2, 3... 9 (URL, add DP=2) : change resolution. Increase the value step by step. Can be very long to draw, but it's worth it for printing. Very High Resolution can be achieved (depends on your system, test before purchase). Image is saved automatically at the end of the drawing.
LiveMode
press L (URL, add liveMode=true) : to discover different views of your planetary system (images will be drawn one after the other, with the same parameters for the main planet and the space environment).
FitToScreen
press F (URL, add fitToScreen=true) : to adapt the artwork to any screen size (artwork is changed but main parameters remain the same).
Monochrome mode
press M (URL, add monoChromatic=true) : to force the artwork to be monochromatic
Remove Gravitational Wave mode
press G (URL, add GW=false) : to remove the gravitational wave effect
Offset
URL, add offset=<Number>, to offset the image production (same planet parameters and space environment).
Grainy
URL, add grainy=true, to produce images with larger grains and speed the rendering process (useful for display purpose)
URL Parameters
URL Parameters are added to the end of a URL after a ‘?’ symbol, and multiple parameters can be included when separated by the ‘&’ symbol.
You can combine "?liveMode=true&fitToScreen=true&grainy=true" in the URL for display purpose (TV, Art show...).
You can combine "?liveMode=true&DP=4&offset=1000" to produce new images and save them automatically with the correct resolution (to adapt the resolution to your needs).
Sample Gallery
Vitie the Sample Gallery page to have a glimpse of what you could mint (or obtain with your token with the liveMode possibilities.)
High Resolution
In the Interactive guide you'll be explained how to achieve high resolution images. Here, an example of details obtained with DP=6 (5672x8508 pixels rendered in 30 minutes). This is a good example where the thumbnail do not give justice to the planet details... but in High Resolution the details are beautiful (and DP can go higher than 6)...