NASA launched the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) spacecraft to geosynchronous orbit (around Earth) in 2010. the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) project on board SDO photographs our Sun every 15 minutes (24/7/365) using four multi-wavelength telescopic cameras (and NASA posts the images at http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/aiahmi/).

on November 11, 2019, SDO recorded a transit of Mercury (from our perspective, Mercury moved across the surface of our Sun over about 6.5 hours), a somewhat rare event (it happens every 3 to 13 years, the next one is in 2032). photos of the Sun during the transit show a Mercury sized-and-shaped black hole contrasted against our Sun.

staring at our Sun (transit of Mercury 2019 flyby (AIA304, 79" Sun))

this cascading accordion stitches together 23 images, side-by-side, in sequence, illustrating the transit in a 3.5 inches height by width expandable to 7.2 feet book. each image is sourced from NASA's SDO/AIA project, then enlarged & excerpted to illustrate the transit as a cascading accordion (as if from the perspective of another craft traveling alongside Mercury).

staring at our Sun (transit of Mercury 2019 flyby (AIA171, 79" Sun, with NASA Mercury))

this cascading accordion stitches together 23 images, side-by-side, in sequence (3.5 inches height by width expandable to 7.2 feet). each image is sourced from NASA's SDO/AIA project, then enlarged, excerpted to illustrate the transit as a cascading accordion (as if from the perspective of another craft traveling alongside Mercury), with a NASA image of Mercury superimposed over the Mercury black hole in the original photographs.

both works are full color inkjet print (mixing 11 pigment inks) on superheavyweight matte plus paper (starting with the 12x36” prints, which are cut, hand-folded, seamed, pressed, and sleeved in studio)