builderall

Cosmic Reflections

These images are available as framed prints, on canvas, as backlit Duratrans at FineArtAmerica.com for purchase in smaller sizes - under 20x18. Go here - https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/gene-anderson. For larger sizes and signed limited edition Giclee prints on paper, canvas or backlit frame, email Gene@ImagineGeneAnderson.com

Animated Artwork

Up until the 1920s, the prevailing view of the universe was that it is static, not moving, forever unchanging, always has and always will be.  Einstein’s theory of relativity predicted a surprising side effect - that the universe is either expanding or contracting. In 1925, Edwin Hubble proved that the universe is expanding. He also gave us a new perspective on the size of the universe.
It was thought at the time that all the stars we see around us is the entire universe. Hubble demonstrated that all we see in our sky are the stars in a larger system, the Milky Way galaxy. The only thing visible outside our galaxy to the naked eye is a tiny blurry dot, our largest neighbor galaxy Andromeda. Astronomers have known there is something unusual about that “star” for centuries, some Indian tribes even claim that their sky gods came from this star.
Edwin Hubble helped expand our view of who we are in this vast universe. He estimated the size of our galaxy to be a 100,000 light years across with 400 billion stars (1 light year is 6 trillion miles). Outside our galaxy are a trillion other galaxies with 100s of billions of stars in each one. Our solar system is located in an outer arm of the spiral giant about 35,000 light years from the center of the super massive black hole that holds our galaxy together. Alpha Centauri is the closest visible star to our solar system at 4 light years away and Andromeda is 3 million light years from our Milky Way.
It takes light emitted from the sun, 8.5 minutes to travel the 93 million miles to earth. In 1977 the Voyager 1 space probe was launched and has been traveling at 38,000 mph for 36 years. It is 17 light hours from the sun and will be the first man made object to leave our solar system in 2015. In another 56,000 years (that’s the year 58013) Voyager will approach our nearest visible neighbor Alpha Centauri.

– If I Had Telescopic Eyes –

When I was a young boy living in the deserts of West Texas, I would do as humans have done for millennia, lie out in the yard on a blanket and look up at the stars on hot summer evenings. Because the desert is dry, the sky is crystal clear and it stretches from horizon to horizon. I have always been fascinated by the stars and was thrilled by the launch of the Hubble space telescope in 1990. It began to reveal the extraordinary wonderland that I knew was out there. I wished that I could see with telescopic eyes and I imagined how my world might look with these eyes. I began to combine these extraordinary images of the galaxy with  scenes I’ve photographed of our earthly realm. This body of work “Cosmic Reflections” is the result of my collaboration with the exquisite deep space imagery from the Hubble telescope. 

Gene Anderson Gallery

s[s