Painting the universe's portrait

Humans have long strived to describe the universe they find themselves in, whether they believed it was carried on the back of a giant turtle, shaped by an old bearded guy, or came into existence in a fiery explosion.

As part of this effort to make sense of the totality of reality, people have produced a stunning array of images representing the universe and celestial phenomena, using everything from paintbrushes to supercomputers. Filmmaker and author Michael Benson has collected 320 pages' worth of these artistic portraits of the universe, composed over a span of some 4,000 years, in his new book, Cosmigraphics: Picturing Space Through Time (Abrams).

Take a look at a selection of the artworks, below, which are truly out of this world.

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