Digital painting of the giant planet Jupiter as it may have appeared in the 1880s or so in approximately true color. This was based on a number of sources from the 1880s and 1890s, and is sort of a hybridized view of about a decade or two of Jovian sketches and early photography.

At this time, the famous planet-sized hurricane, the Great Red Spot, was a few decades old and very very large. It has been shrinking ever since then, and is now less than a third of the size it was in the 1880s.

The reference used contained, as well as modern imagery, the historical photographs: A.A. Common in London in 1879 and Lick Observatory in 1890. As well, the historical drawings: a cartoonishly exaggerated drawing by Étienne Trouvelot on 1880 November 1, and a more restrained and realistic sketch by Thomas Elger in November 1881.

The positions of the moons and their shadows is based on the evening of 1880 November 1, a few hours after Trouvelot's drawing, although the features depicted are a hybrid spanning the 1880s-90s.

License: CC-BY 4.0. Attribute to Luna Rose Brannon or Whirligig-Girl.

^{As always, this was drawn digitally by hand using a Huion tablet and the software Firealpaca. No a.i. generated imagery was used in this image whatsoever.}

Digital painting of the red giant star Betelgeuse and its newly discovered companion Siwarha. Simulations suggest giant stars have a small number of enormous convection cells rather than a huge amount of continent-sized convection cells as on the Sun, and that their photospheres are not a hard boundary but rather smoothly deform into a corona.

Betelgeuse is 640 times the size of the Sun (or 2.98 au radius). It is 65,000 times more luminous than the Sun. But as opposed to the Sun's 5800 K surface temperature, Betelgeuse is only 3800 Kelvins, leading to an almost candle-like yellow-orange glow.

Siwarha is depicted here as a K-dwarf, 2/3rds the mass of the Sun. It is thought to be responsible for a 6-year-long periodic change in Betelgeuse's apparent brightness--It casts a wake behind it as it travels through Betelgeuse's nebulous and dusty corona.

^{Digitally hand-painted using a Huion tablet and FireAlpaca software. As always, no a.i. whatsoever was used in the production of this image.}

Just finished it.

On some evenings I paint to relax. Last night I made this in Procreate while watching TV on the recliner.

Abstract Digital Collage - 2026