Don Davis
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ddavisspaceart.bsky.social
Don Davis
@ddavisspaceart.bsky.social
2.1K followers 99 following 490 posts
Space Artist, sky observer and photographer. Processor of space images. Interested in Astronomy, Planetary Geology, history and in what the future may bring.
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Seven years from tonight a small asteroid might make a new 1.3 kilometer wide crater on the Moon. Of course the refined path of 22024 YR4 may well rule this out between now and then, but for a couple years there can be a bit of photogenic suspense. Rendered in Electric Image Animator.

#Sciart
This frame from an ongoing animation project shows the plume from the impact of the approximately 60 meter wide asteroid 2024 YR4 which will pass nearest the Moon, with a current 4 percent chance of such an impact, about 15:20 UT December 22, 2032. This is a 3D render of the Moon as it will be lit then with the impact having just happened, with the ejecta cone spreading from the impact site. Some of this plume would likely make it to Earth and cause an intense meteor shower. This is a frame of my animation of the passage of Asteroid 2024 YR4 through the Earth/Moon system on December 22, 2032. This is a 3D asteroid landscape I modeled using hand painted Digital Elevation maps with many separate rock models added. For a time at the beginning of this year Earth was within the 'uncertainty zone' of the asteroid path, and I was pondering what part of Earth to show getting pummeled. Then the path was better defined, sparing Earth from this one. This scene shows Earth at about the closest approach as the small asteroid passes it on the way to the vicinity of the Moon.
December 23, 2025 at 6:29 AM
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A nice Sunset! while the sky wasn't filled with clouds, those that were there were lit by very red rays of Sunlight shining through hundreds of miles of clean air, filtered into nearly pure spectral colors.
This photograph shows a cloud mass Northwest of Joshua Tree, California as the last very reddened rays of the setting Sun played across it. Intriguing dynamic textures are highlighted by the grazing light along the sides and bottom. Taken December 19, 2025 with a Canon 6D.
December 20, 2025 at 3:18 AM
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When I visit a place famous in the Ancient World I try to visualize what it was like when the place made a name for itself. In Alexandria I visited the site of the Pharos, the great lighthouse. The Qaitbay fort was built over the stump of the fallen tower, here it is in the context of what was.
This photo was made in Alexandria in 2010, when I returned home I added a digital reconstruction of the great Pharos lighthouse as it would have appeared from that angle. I became interested in the Ancient World from my work on the PBS TV show Cosmos. Later I compiled visual references for the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Much later I used these references to create digital models of these structures. This was later matched to a viewpoint I sought out when I visited Alexandria for the 2010 International Planetarium Society convention. The lighthouse of Alexandria was one of the 7 Wonders of the Ancient World. From about the 280s BC it weathered the elements and conquests around it until an earthquake in 796 caused major cracks. In 951 and especially 956 the top floor sustained major quake damage and a domed Mosque replaced the top story. Abu el-Balawi (name abbreviated) visited the deteriorating Pharos in 1166 and left our most detailed description of the building, including numerous measurements. A major 1303 quake brought down the second story and a side of the first story, with the building surviving well enough in 1326 for the traveller Ibn Battutain to find the interior still accessible. In his 1349 revisit he found the interior too ruined to enter. A 1375 quake toppled the remaining first story, scattering its stone blocks into the harbor in a sideways collapse. The German scholar Herman Thiersch made a detailed study of the Pharos and in 1909 published a reconstruction of the building whose general form, basically holds up today. The Pharos was approximately 110 meters, or about 360 feet tall, comparable to a Saturn V Apollo rocket stack. This tower made such an impression that it had many prolonged echoes in architecture over the centuries, beginning with the form of the shape of minarets in regional Mosques. To this day lighthouses generally have an octagonal upper story as a reference to that in the lighthouse of Alexandria.
December 17, 2025 at 4:35 AM
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Views of a lost work of art. I painted an outdoor scene in oils on the coarse canvas textures of an alcove connecting the rear entrance with the large ground floor rooms. The scene was what one could see a half mile away at St Patrick's Seminary, then a large plot of mostly pristine Menlo Park land.
These are scans from a couple slides of an indoor mural I painted inside a three story mansion I lived in from 1973 to 1982, where I did art embellishing that house for my room and board. In those years there was a nearby parcel of largely untouched land with the Catholic Seminary in its center. It was acres of grassland with oak trees clustered here and there. it was what the San Francisco Bay Mid Peninsula used to be like before the urbanization swallowed it all up. As a child I was a passenger in cars there and watched the flickering perspective based vanishing points of precisely planted rows of trees in wide orchards still covering portions of the Santa Clara Valley. The green beauty of sunlight shining through the blades of fresh grass like tiny stained glass bits delighted my young eyes, and in paintings I worked to show that effect of 'transmitted light' on grass using 'glazing' methods like the Dutch masters, and Chesley Bonestell, used. In such paintings a light lemon yellow coat would be applied and allowed to dry until I could paint over it with a rich green, diluted a little with a clear oil paint medium and 'scrubbed' onto the surface so some of the yellow undercoat 'shines' through. This method was used in works like my wraparound cover for Carl Sagan's 'The Dragons of Eden' and my grassy Space Colony interior paintings. This mural used such methods for the leaves overhead and the sunward part of the field, with duller opaquely painted details for the scenery opposite the Sun. The ceiling lamp was made a part of the work by showing it hanging from a tree limb on the rounded dome like ceiling. This was done in media that would have lasted centuries. Alas, such works are nothing to people anymore, the next owners painted over or stripped away everything. Murals are not worth doing as their existence cannot be counted on for any length of time. And, sadly, most of that lovely St Patricks Seminary field is also gone, a victim of urban sprawl.
December 16, 2025 at 7:32 AM
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All night meteors flared like white sparks in the sky, looming above the light pollution illuminated high clouds and occasionally having their light diffused through them. Every few minutes one could be seen, and a few times 2 and even three would appear near each other a few seconds apart.
These three photographs capture meteors from the Geminid shower, a yearly show that is one of the best. This meteor shower was better than the more famous Perseids have been for many years. Left and right: Brighter meteors streak downwards beyond the city light illuminated high clouds, their burning paths preserved as a line of light. Middle: an especially bright meteor whose light was diffused by a mass of intervening high cloud.
December 14, 2025 at 3:07 PM
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The Geminid meteor shower is performing nicely tonight. Several minutes outside in clear dark conditions will essentially guarantee seeing at least one, with 2 or 3 close to each other within a few seconds seen periodically. Many of them are brighter than the star Sirius.
This is a photograph of a meteor trail 'burned into' the image as one streaked across the sky overhead while the shutter was open during a long exposure last night. Typical exposures hoping to catch a meteor are 20 or more seconds, which cause the stars to elongate as the rotation of Earth moves the sky slowly during the long exposure. Only the brighter ones are recorded this way but fortunately many of them are indeed quite bright.
December 14, 2025 at 9:59 AM
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30 years ago yesterday the Galileo probe entered the atmosphere of Jupiter. I made this animation for NASA Ames using traditional methods, paint on acetate cels and shot on 35mm film. It is real time like the old Apollo news animations. My sequences start at +35 secs
www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUtI...
USA - Galileo Spacecraft Jupiter Probe Animation
YouTube video by AP Archive
www.youtube.com
December 8, 2025 at 1:55 PM
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The (nearly) full Moon and the early morning clouds.
This photograph from Joshua Tree, California was built from two exposures, one for the clouds and one that barely shows the Lunar Maria splotches.
December 4, 2025 at 3:38 PM
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The Sunset of November 30 2025 was an impressive display of dramatic lighting and saturated color. The highly reddened sunlight, passing through long lines of sight, illuminated delicate textures near and along the cloud bottoms with a progressively golden to coral orange to very red radiance.
This is a series of photographs made November 30, 2025 from Joshua Tree, California. The Sunset that evening was a fantastic show. The conditions were right with long lines of sight for sunlight passing through hundreds of miles of clean air. This gives the heavily filtered sunlight a 'pure' saturated quality. Here we see the undersides of a broken wind shaped cloud ceiling catching this light, with a sharp shadow cast by one cloud mass upon another for a time. The last sunlight touching the clouds in the far distance is very red, taxing the ability of the camera to capture it.
December 1, 2025 at 6:00 AM
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The Sun eclipsed by Earth as seen by the returning Apollo 12 crew. This colorization of a B&W photo suggests how a composite made from different exposures might have appeared if they hadn't run out of color Hasselblad film. Hopefully one day this sight will be captured with capable color cameras.
This photo shows the Sun being eclipsed by Earth as seen by the returning Apollo 12 crew. It was colorized atop a B&W photo and shows the colors reported by the crew at the time as well as those marginally recorded on 16mm film. Note the compressed Sun reflection recording its flattening by the refraction of Earths atmosphere.
November 25, 2025 at 12:36 AM
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Today, 62 years later, I again remember that day as an 11 year old in San Jose, California. The weather was similar to todays, a dark ominous overcast. I remember the crazy panicked school kid comments, and going home to the TV coverage. Here are 4 simultaneous photographs of that moment in Dallas.
These are photos of the third and final shot that ended the life of President Kennedy on 12:30 Texas time November 22, 1963. This event was captured on several still and movie cameras. 8 mm film was a common home media then, and that time was about the start of when events with many witnesses started being likely to have photo documentation. Here is photography in different media, Polaroid still and 8mm motion pictures, of the last 'head shot' that killed President Kennedy. Upper left: Mary Ann Moorman brought her Polaroid camera and clicked the shutter just as the Presidents car passed by. Upper right: This is a frame from the 8mm movie Mary Muchmore obtained for slightly over three seconds, Mary Moorman can be seen taking her photo on the left in the black dress. Lower left: Orville Nix obtained a similar but farther view with his 8mm movie camera. Lower right: The 8mm Zapruder Film is the measuring rod by which all other photography of the assassination is referenced. No other camera obtained as clear and continuous coverage of the events. This is frame 'Z' 315, two frames after the impact. A resulting 'puff' can be seen above Kennedy's head. The book 'Pictures Of The Pain Photography and the assassination of President Kennedy' by Richard B. Trask is Probably the best book quantifying the visual evidence that will ever be made. One intriguing finding of the book is that there were several photographers at the scene whose images have never been seen. The echoes of that terrible day reverberate in the minds of those who remember, like the other few Big Moments that touched the hearts of those alive then. November 22 was a seminal event, which along with the Vietnam policies of the Johnson Administration brought a time of contemplation and reappraisal to millions of especially younger people. Sober appraisals of where we were collectively going and what we wanted to do and be rose to the surface. And the Apollo Moon landings became part of his legacy.
November 23, 2025 at 5:34 AM
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The view from from the windows of the Apollo 12 Lunar Module just after landing 56 years ago. Apollo 12 was a great mission although the loss of the color TV camera at the beginning of the first EVA was a blow to live network coverage. In due time we saw the color and B&W photos the crew returned.
This is a panorama assembled from numerous photographs made through the windows of the Apollo 12 Lunar Module 'Intrepid' shortly after landing on November 19, 1969. After the successful first landing by Apollo 11 in July the second mission refined methods to make precision landings. They succeeded, and landed within walking distance to the derelict probe Surveyor 3 which had touched down on April 20 1967. The scenery shows the saturated cratered surface typical of the Lunar lava plains, or 'Maria', with impact craters of all size ranges covering the pulverized surface. This is a landscape of eternity, with only the locations of the innumerable craters changing over time as new ones gradually erase the older ones. The shadow of the LM stretches toward the horizon, with a bright 'Heiligenschein' glow centered on the antisolar point. This brightening is caused by the lack of visible cast shadows behind the illuminated irregular surfaces, making a 'zero phase' point, and enhanced by the presence of tiny glass beads scattered in the upper surface layer, or 'regolith'. Just as this appears around where the shadow of the observer would be, one can see a comparable effect when walking in the early morning across a wide field of grass covered with dew. Near the shadow of your head a brightening will appear as the many round drops refract the light so a lot of it returns in roughly the direction it came from. Road markers and signs also use paint with imbedded glass beads to reflect light back at autos.
November 20, 2025 at 10:39 AM
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It's been a while since I posted my art, so here's one of my K-T impact related works, 'Land and sea'. Before I was into space I was into Dinosaurs and I have done several prehistoric life paintings over the years.
Here the giant impact blasts land and ocean areas, upending the regional scenery.
This is an acrylic on illustration board depicting two aspects of a far ranging giant impact event happening near a coastline. Idealistically clear viewing conditions are assumed. We are just outside the rapidly expanding 'transient crater' which on land violently disrupts the landscape. The surface is being upended with the shockwave battered trees still clinging to chunks of surface layer. A Triceratops is seen in the foreground after having slammed and dragged along the ground. On the ocean The crater formation also happens with a massive wave adding to the regional effects. A Plesiosaur and some ocean bottom debris are being carried along the wall, or more properly inverted cone, of water. This 'ejecta cone' falls in a widening circle and on land leaves a huge 'ray pattern' of pulverized rock. The water makes a mega tsunami scouring coastal regions to the bare rock such as humans have never experienced. #Sciart
November 19, 2025 at 3:05 AM
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The Sunrise of November 17, 2025 featured the deep red of highly filtered sunlight passing through a great distance of clean air to illuminate a layer of high clouds. Initially as the first sunlight touched the most distant clouds, the saturated coral red clouds blazed with a striking radiance.
This is a photograph of the Sunrise of November 17 2025, which turned out to be a surprise burst of color. During the chilly night a cloud ceiling, left over from the weather system passing through the High Desert, steadily cleared enough to gradually unveil the stars. As dawn broke the remaining high clouds turned out to be ideally placed to catch the light of sunlight passing through hundreds of miles of rain and wind cleaned air. The lighting spread and became more orange but still kept its florescent saturated quality. A low shredding remnant of the earlier storms passed by in the foreground, the Sun not shining on it yet. The photo, adjusted to match my visual impression, come reasonably close to conveying the sight early in the event.
November 18, 2025 at 3:21 AM
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The Sunrise of November 14 2025 happened as rain falling across the High Desert was bathed in the rosy colored first sunlight. This then illuminated the rain falling to my West and produced a lovely rainbow. At Joshua Tree it briefly made a delicate wide bow emphasizing the red end of the spectrum.
The sunrise of November 14 2025 happened as light rain fall across the High Desert. As the rain around me was illuminated by heavily reddened sunlight through a gap in the clouds to the East, a delicate nearly full rainbow dominated the Western sky. This is a mosaic of three frames, plus some hand retouching to fill in the sky in the top corners. I wish I could have captured this as a fulldome time lapse sequence but there was light rain falling and I didn't want to be constantly wiping drops off the fisheye lens with a 'Q'tip while trying to stay out of the shot.
November 17, 2025 at 11:24 AM
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Here's the aurora as seen last night from Joshua Tree, California at 34 degrees North.
This photo shows the red glow of the aurora extending above the northern horizon and clouds. At its peak a faint red glow could be seen with the naked eye. The clouds then covered the region.
November 12, 2025 at 9:56 AM
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All last night the sky was covered with high clouds that drifted in a ghostly procession over the Moon. They at times became broad parallel strips which acted as a 'screen' for a Lunar halo surrounding the gibbous Moon. I obtained some all sky sequences as the clouds developed and passed by.
Alternating stripes of cloud and relatively clear sky are passing over the High Desert near Joshua Tree, California on the early morning of November 3, 2025. This is a frame from an all sky time lapse photo sequence made with a fisheye lens. Such a sequence can be projected in a Planetarium dome to reproduce the original viewing geometry.
November 3, 2025 at 6:31 PM
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October 27, 2025 ended with twilight adorned by luminous colorful brush strokes due to an earlier launch from Vandenberg. The plume was invisible until the darkening sky above the twilight revealed it as as a pale white wisp. Later, as Earth's shadow climbed up the plume, sunset colors appeared.
This is a series of photos of the lighting changing on the plume left over from a launch from Vandenberg hours before. These plumes are always fun to observe and photograph. It wasn't visible until the twilight was in progress, and then for a time only as a faint white wisp. As the surrounding sky darkened the sunlit plume shone at first white to blue white. This blue white color is partially due to the particle sizes acting on the light and partly due to the 'whiter' color of sunlight unfiltered by the atmosphere which makes our standard 'noon sunlight' a little yellower by the time it gets to the ground. The lower portions of the plume are enveloped in the climbing Earths shadow first, their lighting changing to whatever color dominates the heavily filtered Sun as it sets from that altitude. Typically the Sun, seen from up there setting behind a 'horizon' hundreds of miles away, will become yellower, then orange and finally a saturated coral red as it's flattened refracted remnants dwindle away.
October 28, 2025 at 7:11 AM
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Just after midnight this morning an unexpected intense lightning storm passed over the High Desert. I went outside with my tripod and took time exposures to capture the nearby lightning strikes. This one is the closest bolt I have ever photographed, a mile or so away based on the sound delay.
This photograph was among the first made after going outside as the storm was closest, with this bolt hitting not much more than a mile away. It was scary, very bright and loud. This photo was made using a wide angle lens, which was essential as the storm was so close the location of subsequent bolts was hard to predict. Visually it was like a photo flashbulb going off in my face. An earlier strike on the nearby mountains set a small fire, which was quickly put out. I did not see that fire, but while living in Palm Springs I saw a bolt hit the mountains nearby at night, leaving a small orange glowing spot the color of a cigarette someone is inhaling on.
October 23, 2025 at 2:55 AM
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Comet C/2025 A6 Lemmon now shines in the evening skies, although the better photos I have seen of this one are either from farther North or made using telescopes. Last night, the 20th, it briefly appeared as the twilight faded before it lowered too much, its modest tail extending away from the Sun.
This photograph of Comet Lemmon shows it looming over the Northwest twilight on the evening of October 20, 2025. This photo, made from Joshua Tree, California, has been processed to bring out the comet. Aircraft and satellite trails have been retouched out. The comet was barely visible to me using averted vision, but photographically a couple degrees or so of tail can be recorded. Many excellent photos showing a faint but long tail are circulating on line, generally taken from more Northerly latitudes. Numerous close-ups of the comet have also been obtained by astrophotographers. This is really more of a 'telescopic' comet than a visual one, but it is always fun to see what can be seen and captured with whatever equipment one has.
October 22, 2025 at 5:52 AM
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The comet C/2025 A6 (LEMMON) grew more prominent in the morning skies as the Moon's phase waned and its tail brightened. Here is a series of photos showing this modest comet's tail emerging as the skies darkened. The comet was not visible to my eyes.
This is a series of photos made of the modest comet C/2025 A6 (LEMMON) as the skies darkened each morning earlier this month. It is barely bright enough to see visually under ideal conditions, especially in more Northerly latitudes, but it is a rewarding object to observe and photograph through telescopes. These photos, cropped from a series of photos made with a 50mm fast lens from Joshua Tree, California, give an idea of how fainter things in the sky show up as the background sky brightness, usually due to city lights, is reduced.
October 20, 2025 at 7:04 AM
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The High Desert had another striking sunset the evening of October 10, 2025. The falling rain was lit here and there in the sky, with a rainbow briefly adorning the East. The reddening rays then highlighted the Western clouds as shadowed masses churned in slow motion overhead.
This photo shows a dark cloud shadow cast in falling rain as a 'dark beam', with more concentrated falling filaments of rain catching the orange filtered sunlight at right center. This wide angle photo shows the later stages of this sunset, as the Western edges of clouds were illuminated by the highly filtered sunlight. Above this we see a broken cloud ceiling with cavern like openings, dominated by the blue colors of the coming night.
October 11, 2025 at 2:13 PM
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A beautiful launch from Vandenberg at twilight. As the sunlit expanding plume headed Southward it passed near the crescent Moon from my perspective. Such sights make me wonder about what incredible comets there might have been that looked like this, seen and unseen, over the ages in Earth's skies.
This photo shows the ascending second stage of a rocket launched from Vandenberg during the early evening of September 28, 2025. We are seeing it passing the crescent Moon, from my perspective at Joshua Tree, California. At this stage such launches have a broadly 'comet like' look near their leading edges.
September 29, 2025 at 5:38 AM
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A recent vista from Mars obtained by the Perseverance Rover on its 1635th Martian day, or 'Sol', Clouds far above the eternal dust pall are unusually well shown in this afternoon view. This is a mosaic of two wide angle color Navcam images.
This mosaic of two wide angle photos from the Perseverance rover shows the Martian surface stretching into the distance beyond two foreground hills. The rover tracks can just be seen winding into the distance. In this view clouds are unusually well defined as they float well above the tan dust that eternally colors the Martian skies. In the original photos the area near the Sun is 'burned out' by the limitations of the camera sensor. I have addressed this by manually painting over the overexposed areas to reconstruct something of the brightness contours as they probably would have appeared to a human observer. I have also 'warped' the lower corners to fill the rectangular format. Artist's prerogative :-)
September 29, 2025 at 12:10 AM
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Clouds are by far my favorite photographic subject. On Saturday September 27, 2025 a storm passed across the High Desert bringing thunder and rain. For a time cumulus clouds rolled over the region, some catching the sunlight and other closer shaded clouds being indirectly lit by them.
This photo shows brightly lit cumulus clouds in the background lighting up the edges of the nearer shaded clouds,
September 28, 2025 at 8:42 AM