here at the academy

Lynette Cook Creates the Cosmos

Blake Edgar

Lynette Cook claims that the sum of her background in astronomy consists of her mother pointing out constellations in the night sky over Cook's childhood home in Illinois. Now, though, Cook is a sought-after, award-winning astronomical artist, who informs and inspires people about some of the latest discoveries in space.

By day, she works as the staff artist and photographer for the Academy's Morrison Planetarium, locating or creating visual elements for each planetarium show. But Cook moonlights as a freelance artist, supplying space imagery to numerous magazines, book publishers, and organizations. An exhibit of her artwork, "The Artist's Universe," continues in the Academy's Earth and Space Hall through Labor Day (or examples can be seen indefinitely in cyberspace at www.spaceart.org/lcook).

After completing undergraduate majors in biology and art from the Mississippi University for Women, Cook headed west to pursue a Master of Fine Arts degree with a focus on scientific illustration at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland. She landed an internship at the Academy in 1983 and began working in the invertebrate zoology and exhibits departments. Earth and Space Hall soon began a renovation, so Cook got her first brush with space art by painting some of the planet models now suspended from the ceiling and the galaxy mural on the wall beside the Foucault's pendulum. She rendered her subjects compellingly enough that when planetarium artist Linda Kulik moved to a new position in the exhibits department, Cook was hired as her successor.

She soon learned that her new subject differed from botany and other more familiar fields by lacking physical specimens available to handle and study. In astronomy, most of the subject matter is either at excessive distances, not directly observable, or not even certain to exist. So, Cook says, "There is room for more imagination with space art, although it has to be fact-based." She believes that astronomical artists today continue the legacy of early American landscape painting by Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Church, and others who traveled westward across the continent, revealing the region's natural beauty and catalyzing subsequent exploration. "In a way, the space artist fulfills a similar role," says Cook. "We make space look accessible and exciting."

Cook organized a group art show at the Academy in 1998 to showcase work by members of the International Association of Astronomical Artists (IAAA). More recently, she conceived and wrote a chapter on space art for a revised handbook of natural science illustration to be published next year by John Wiley and Sons.

Over time, Cook has evolved her own particular mixed-media technique, combining gouache, acrylic, and colored pencil. Most of Cook's fellow IAAA members stick with a single medium; she can't think of a colleague who employs her blend of drawing and painting techniques. Cook also considers an airbrush to be a critical tool for effectively depicting the wispy nature of comets, clouds, and nebulae.

Last year, Cook's work twice garnered global attention through her collaboration with Academy Fellow and University of California at Berkeley astronomer Geoffrey Marcy, a prolific discoverer of extrasolar planets. She has created artistic interpretations of more than two-thirds of the known extrasolar planets. Marcy credits Cook with taking his team's indirect planet detections, inferred from measuring the gravitational tug on the visible parent star, and rendering them with plausible sizes, colors, and orbits. "The most important ontribution Lynette makes is reaching beyond the data in a scientifically logical way," says Marcy. "As a scientist, I would lose credibility on my basic results if I extrapolated too far beyond. But, from theory, some of our planets probably do have moons, and some probably have rings."

In the fast-paced and competitive world of discovering other worlds, Cook often has little time to create her interpretations. A year ago, she received two weeks' notice to produce a painting of the first-ever planetary system found beyond the Sun-a trio of planets orbiting the star Upsilon Andromedae-prior to a press conference announcing the discovery. Her painting was adapted as part of a two-page spread in Newsweek magazine. Then in November, Cook received a call from Marcy regarding his latest news-to be announced the next day. Astronomer Greg Henry had, for the first time, measured the slight dimming of light from a star as its companion planet, which had been detected by Marcy's team two days earlier, passed across the star. The new planet's presence was thus confirmed by a different, independent method.

Despite the short notice, Cook made a realistic rendering of the planet transiting the star HD 209458 in Pegasus-so much so that some were fooled into thinking that astronomers had somehow photographed the distant passing planet's silhouette. She sent Marcy a digital image of her artwork, which he posted on his website, identifying it as an artistic rendering.

An Australian colleague soon alerted Cook to the fact that her image had been distributed over the Associated Press (AP) newswire. Cook eventually learned that the Tri-Valley Herald newspaper had released the image to AP, without first obtaining her permission and without indicating that it was an artist's interpretation. Some newspapers ran the painting with a caption implying that the transit had been observed directly. After being contacted by astute readers, The San Diego Union-Tribune published a lengthy editorial to sort out the confusion. Says Marcy, in retrospect, "It's a tribute to Lynette that her artwork has such high scientific integrity that it passes for data."

Blake Edgar is Senior Editor of California Wild.