The sun, the moon, and our earth

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Lurking in the woods at Basildon Park was Helios, a seven-metre sculpture of the Sun, created by artist, Luke Jerram.

 

 

Over 400,000 photos of the Sun were used to construct Helios. The solar sphere is a composite of multiple high-resolution images of the Sun’s chromosphere using a 150 mm refractor operating at f34 fitted with two narrowband hydrogen alpha filters (passing only red light at specifically 656.28 nm) and a Basler acA1920-155 um monochrome camera. For each image, the process involved recording on a computer between 3000-7000 individual frames and subsequently processing by stacking, deconvoluting and sharpening to create the individual photographs which were then coloured and used to create the globe.

 

 

Compared to the size of the Sun (1.39 million km) the artwork is at an approximate scale of 1:200 million. Each centimetre of the artwork’s internally lit spherical sculpture represents 2000km of the Sun’s surface. The Sun’s diameter is 109 times that of Earth – about 1,391,400 km (864,600 mi).

 

So, compared to the Sun sculpture, the Earth would be about the size of a tennis ball and on average 750m away.

 

There’s a Van Gogh feel, if you look up close [Van Gogh: Painter of the sun]

 

 

I liked it when framed by the surrounding trees.

 

 

Time to leave

 

Jerram’s other works include the moon (Museum of the Moon) and the earth (Gaia)

 

The moon was displayed in Harwell Campus earlier this summer. Also seven metres in diameter, the moon features 120dpi detailed NASA imagery of the lunar surface. At an approximate scale of 1:500,000, each centimetre of the internally lit spherical sculpture represents 5km of the moon’s surface

 

We’ve seen Gaia twice

 

Gaia @ St Peter Mancroft, Norwich

 

Gaia @ Durham Cathedral

 

Not everyone finds these works interesting. One below the line comment says “I must be missing something. I find Jerram’s works to be exceedingly overrated. Sure, there’s a moment of “oh look at that” for about 5 seconds, that gives way to “oh is that it?”. Something for everyone I guess!”. What about you?

• www.lukejerram.com
• my-helios.org
• my-moon.org

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