Stop crafting mere illustrations - craft stories

As astronomy is often not able to image more than a single dot of light, artist impressions of detected objects is of prime importance to communicate our results to the public, and convey the wonders of the cosmos. This is particularly true in the case of exoplanets which are usually not even imaged directly but detected indirectly via their effect on their parents stars. In this talk, I will lead you through my usual workflow to create artist impressions of exoplanets and planetary bodies for the press releases published by my institute.

I will reveal my secrets to make images creating stronger emotional impact, while balancing respect for the physics of the displayed planetary body. One such secret is to push further than the simple illustration and include a story in it: questioning why each minute detail of the illustration is where it is and how it would have came to be in the real world. If time and technical set up allow, I will also give a live demonstration of this workflow by crafting a (simplified) illustration with the inputs of the session attendees. I will also tackle how I take inspiration from nature's beauty and of the textures of my environment, incorporating every day elements in my illustrations.

In this example, the story telling was naturally occuring from the represented subject: a planet undergoing terraformation, which could lead to detection of technosignatures in the atmosphere of an exoplanet.