By Jon Lomberg

10 days of science is thoroughly excited to introduce renowned ‘astronomy-inspired’ artist Jon Lomberg as its special new guest blogger.

Thirty-two years ago something extraordinary happened to me.

It was August 20, 1977 and I was sitting in the viewing stands at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. I was watching the launch of NASA’s Voyager 2 mission to the outer solar system and beyond. Atop the Titan Centaur rocket, the shiny and new Voyager spacecraft was inside the nose of the launch vehicle, packaged as carefully as a Ming vase (though worth a thousand times more!)

Wrapped in its protective cocoon, the spacecraft awaited its fate.

Affixed to its side was an unusual piece of cargo. Unlike everything else onboard, this object had no role to play in the exploration of the outer planets for which Voyager had been designed. If Voyager was a masterpiece of artifice, this object was, in a sense, the artist’s signature.

A signature to be read by anyone who finds the Voyager adrift in space, beyond our solar system one million, ten million, or nine hundred million years from that day.

This signature was in the form of a copper, phonograph long-playing record. Not a DVD or a CD-ROM, not a laser disk or audio compact disk. This was the era before digital, when vinyl was still king.

And what is recorded on this record? Nothing less than a description of our planet and our species, in the form of sounds, music and images.

All selected and organised in a way that aimed to make it as easy as possible for an alien intelligence to decipher.

But how are the ETs supposed to figure out what this object is, you may wonder? No worries. The record is in a box engraved with graphic instructions, demonstrating how to play it. We also packed a cartridge and stylus (old vinyl technology) inside the box to get them started.

I say “we also packed…” because I was part of the small team that compiled this message from Earth. Working with astronomers Carl Sagan and Frank Drake, and a handful of other colleagues, I helped select the music and sounds, and devised a sequence of photographs and diagrams showing ETs our world and what is in it.

I also drew the cover diagram on the box containing the record. That design, as well as the record itself, has an estimated lifetime of one billion years before micrometeorites destroy the protective box and the record’s surface.

Another billion years will pass before destruction settles upon the B-side of the record.

Musing on the work we had done, I sat and watched the clouds of vapor begin to appear at the rocket’s base, watching it stir and begin to lift, rising into the sky out of its fiery inferno blast, before the noise finally reached us, two miles away.

I watched something I had made leave the bonds of Earth and embark on a voyage nearly eternal in human terms. Very few experiences can be compared to this. I felt a combination of awe, pride, humility and wonder that the work of my hand and mind was now going where no one had ever gone before.

I also felt that whatever subsequently happened in my life, nothing would match that moment. I was 29 years old (very young to have completed a billion-year portfolio!) and was worried that the rest of my life would be an anticlimax after probably the most significant accomplishment of my artistic life.

It hasn’t been. I feel like the luckiest man alive in terms of the opportunities I have had an as artist inspired by astronomy. I have reported on the exploration of space for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, watched computer animation being invented before my eyes and made the first “artist impressions” of newly-discovered objects in space.

I have worked on exciting projects in radio, television and films with Jodi Foster and Lily Tomlin, Patrick Stewart and James Earl Jones; and met personal heroes like Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov.

I even got the chance to send my art into space again.

Three objects I helped design are now on the surface of Mars. NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity rovers carry a sundial used as a student experiment, which also carries a message to the future human colonists on Mars. A more elaborate message is on NASA’s Phoenix lander, in the form of a DVD called ‘Visions of Mars’, a gift to to our great-grandchildren who inhabit the Red Planet.

When I see the orange dot in the sky that is Mars, I know that work of mine is on that distant world.

But for sheer awe, nothing has really compared to my message to the stars. As the decades pass, interest in the Voyager Record remains undiminished, Try it – Google will give you many thousands of hits. What I am most struck (and relieved) by is the general approval the message has received from those on whose behalf it is sent—the people of Earth.

Being asked to participate in this year’s National Science Week in Australia’s is a great honour. This will be my third visit to Australia, and I very much look forward to it. I will be speaking about my work on the Voyager Record in Sydney and Melbourne, showing you as Australians the music and images we included that represent your continent.

One goal of mine has been to visit the places pictured on the Voyager Record. In Australia that meant going to the Sydney Opera House in 1988 for a performance of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. The Queen of the Night’s famous aria was one of the pieces I nominated for inclusion on the Record, and it was very satisfying hearing it performed in Sydney’s contribution to our portrait of Earth.

I haven’t reached Heron Island yet, but I hope to someday. Getting there, however, requires a ticket. Reaching the stars aboard Voyager was a priceless trip I was lucky enough to get for free.

Stay tuned to 10 Days of Science for more postings from Jon Lomberg throughout August.

www.jonlomberg.com

www.galaxygarden.net

Tags: Art, astronomy, NASA, Voyager 2

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