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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 8d

Thanks! As an artist I occasionally address camera limitations manually.

Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 9d

I like that idea, I hope they would use them to drop landers and rovers to the surface. Venus surface exploration has been neglected compared to that of Mars.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 9d

The thin Martian atmosphere extends higher than does Earths due to the lower gravity. Various spacecraft have photographed high thin layers of clouds particularly over the wintertime poles. Here is an example from the European Mars Express orbiter.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 9d

Primarily Co2. They are quite high, at 37 to 50 miles (60 to 80 kilometers)

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 9d

This one has quite a 'painterly' look to it.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 9d

Great photos! Having it pass near the Moon from our perspectives was an added treat!

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 9d

A beautiful launch from Vandenberg at twilight. As the sunlit expanding plume headed Southward it passed near the crescent Moon from my perspective. Such sights make me wonder about what incredible comets there might have been that looked like this, seen and unseen, over the ages in Earth's skies.

This photo shows the ascending second stage of a rocket launched from Vandenberg during the early evening of September 28, 2025. We are seeing it passing the crescent Moon, from my perspective at Joshua Tree, California. At this stage such launches have a broadly 'comet like' look near their leading edges.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 10d

A recent vista from Mars obtained by the Perseverance Rover on its 1635th Martian day, or 'Sol', Clouds far above the eternal dust pall are unusually well shown in this afternoon view. This is a mosaic of two wide angle color Navcam images.

This mosaic of two wide angle photos from the Perseverance rover shows the Martian surface stretching into the distance beyond two foreground hills. The rover tracks can just be seen winding into the distance. In this view clouds are unusually well defined as they float well above the tan dust that eternally colors the Martian skies.
In the original photos the area near the Sun is 'burned out' by the limitations of the camera sensor. I have addressed this by manually painting over the overexposed areas to reconstruct something of the brightness contours as they probably would have appeared to a human observer. I have also 'warped' the lower corners to fill the rectangular format. Artist's prerogative :-)

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 10d

Ideally such art should be photographed with two studio lights with pola filters and one filter on the camera, all turned to suppress specular reflection.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 10d

Chesley Bonestell told me he painted with some extra contrast because the printing process tended to 'gray down' the art.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 10d

Probably not. Different camera systems will handle color balance etc. differently.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 10d

There would be little benefit to trying, although I did improvise some of that process by adding in the indirectly lit shaded sides of the mountains, which do show in other photos. The Moon's landscape is inherently very contrasty with a black sky except for the Sun and the Earth.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 10d

Clouds are by far my favorite photographic subject. On Saturday September 27, 2025 a storm passed across the High Desert bringing thunder and rain. For a time cumulus clouds rolled over the region, some catching the sunlight and other closer shaded clouds being indirectly lit by them.

This photo shows brightly lit cumulus clouds in the background lighting up the edges of the nearer shaded clouds,

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 16d

Here is the waning stages of the visible highly reddened sunlight shining on the distant clouds. While a reasonable approximation, the actual color perceived at the central furthest clouds is elusive to capture with any camera.

This photo of the later stages of the Sunset of September 21, 2025 emphasizes the deep colors seen. Late in the sunset the remaining illuminated cloud area shrinks toward the horizon and the color of the still bright but narrowing band becomes a brilliant orange red. At this point the digital camera begins to 'generalize' the captured image into its color palette. This is processed to appear reasonably close, however the lighting nearest the horizon was noticeably more orange with perhaps a faint pink contribution.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 16d

The Sunset of September 21, 2025 was a fitting curtain call to Summer. This Sunset benefited from the remaining presence of clouds overhead with a gap along the Western horizon. The remaining shreds of rain and broad cloud layers all caught the reddened sunlight shining through that distant gap.

A panorama of three wide angle photos of the Sunset of September 21, 2025. Vast ridges of cloud and remaining traces of rain catch the very reddened last rays of the Sun. The area near the horizon is overexposed and was visually more red orange overall than this photo shows.
Apparently the air extending to and across the nearby Pacific Ocean is currently at least as clean as that to the East of us was during this morning's Sunrise. While that Sunrise was nice, it was relatively restrained in the display of the purely colored lighting compared to this. This sunset was in the 'epic' class in its visual climax as well as in its lingering 'aftermath'. The 'forward scattered light' of such saturated colors brought a radiance to them that made most such events appear relatively subdued in comparison.
As the Earth shadow brought the top of the last sunlit clouds toward the horizon, the color of that light was indescribably intense, saturated with a delicate luminous red orange-pink hues just beyond the capability of a digital camera to capture. It was so with film as well.

In the end it is the direct experience that one savors and treasures, with a photo or painting reminding us of the experience but only to a certain degree. But having seen the event, the processing of the digital photos while the visual memory is fresh on ones mind optimizes the capturing of the visual impression.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 16d

During the sunrise this morning, September 21 2025, the undersides of the clouds were briefly lit by the early Sun rays reddened from passing through perhaps hundreds of miles of storm cleaned air. Hints of dynamic forces distorting and rending the delicate cloud patches overhead could be seen.

Today.September 21, 2025, began and ended with a visual flourish as both Sunrise and Sunset took place as the tattered edges of a tropical storm to our South spread broken cloud layers across the region which caught the first and last rays of the Sun. A broken cloud ceiling caught the first sunlight, with first the underside contours being lit. The color was quite red at first, with a purity testifying to the clean storm swept air the sunlight had travelled hundreds of miles through, filtering out all but the red light. This first light is usually tinted a rust or even brown color from dust, smoke and pollutants weakening the clarity of the air over great distances and adulterating the purity of the ideal yellow to orange to red colors.

This photo shows a portion of the broken cloud ceiling that was nearly overhead as the areas of the illuminated cloud details changed. The illuminated zone shifted from East to West from Earths rotation changed the angle of the light path through the faraway cloud breaks. Illuminated protruding extensions of the dynamic clouds hints of the forces shaping and dissolving them in the different air layers.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 19d

This morning the Moon, Venus and the bright star Regulus rose as a tight grouping before dawn. It was a striking sight in the clear pre dawn skies, with the air having been cleaned by a thunderstorm that had passed through the area last night.

This photo shows the rising of the Moon, Venus and the bright star Regulus behind the nearby mountains at the border of Joshua Tree National Park. Venus is the highest bright object, with the first magnitude star, Regulus, to its lower right. the Moon's night side is lit by reflected light from Earth, while the much brighter sunlit portions are beginning to appear as the two 'horns' of a thin crescent.

This is a composite of two photos of the Conjunction of the Moon, Venus and the star Regulus on the morning of September 19, 2025 as seen from Joshua Tree, California. A short exposure was made to capture the edges of the Moon and the nearby objects. A longer exposure was then made to get the softly lit disk of the Moon, lit by the large bright Earth one would be seeing in the Lunar skies across the side of the Moon we see.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 23d

Amazing. From 34 deg N the SAR edge was overhead.

Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 23d

I remember that, a forgettable made for TV movie. It appeared to spend most of its budget on the model shots of that building getting wrecked.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · Sep 7

I don't know. Based on the styles I would guess that #1 is consistent with the style of Michael Carroll, #3 Pat Rawlings and #4 Paul Hudson. But I am not sure.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · Sep 5

A justification I recall originally proposed for orbiting large mirrors was to provide emergency lighting for nighttime disaster scenes where power is gone. The Russians experimented with a modest rotating mirror, it's light could be seen on the nighttime clouds but was too faint to get video of.

Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · Sep 5

I recall they were originally thought of as emergency illumination for disaster areas. I heard about trying to coax crops into growing more, an idea subject to the concerns you express. If they build one, It would be cool to see the visual effects of the 'beam', but keep it away from observatories!

Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · Sep 5

Variations of this idea go back a long time. Krafft Ehricke, rocket scientist and space visionary, proposed such mirrors. A smaller one would be the 'Lunetta' meant to simulate full Moon illumination and the 'Soletta' meant to mimic the Sun. Experiments were done with this idea by the Russians.

Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · Sep 5

A view of the recent lightning, not with any bolts but nicely showing the inner glow of lightning illuminating regions within the thunderhead. The lightning was nearly continuous for a time, with every 2.5 second exposure having some. If there's lightning in the area I'm out there with my camera.

This panorama of a lightning storm in the High Desert is a composite of two exposures.
For some time as darkness fell this storm in the distance put on a nice show, with at times rapid and even overlapping lightning within and around it's spreading crown. It was just close enough to hear its continuous low rumble. I would expose for between 2.5 and 15 seconds depending on the frequency of the lightning. Flashes here and there revealed billowing cloud masses silhouetted against the inner brightness. Once in a while lightning itself appeared along the outer surfaces, in single jagged bolts as well as radiating 'fingers' wrapped around the billows. Occasionally a flash would reveal great overhanging cloud masses looking like a vast grotto frozen in an electric instant.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · Sep 5

I always tape over my computers camera unless I am using it for zoom etc. I once got an extortionist email, mentioning a long gone facebook password, threatening to release video of something they said would be terminally embarrassing and it brought a quick laugh as I don't even look at such sites.