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/).

staring at our Sun (transit of Mercury 2019 flyby (AIA131, 23" Sun, inverted))

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 (or, in this case, with inverted images, a Mercury sized-and-shaped white hole).

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, inverted, and 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 Venus flyby (AIA131, 23" Sun, inverted))

on June 5, 2012, SDO recorded a transit of Venus (from our perspective, Venus moved across the surface of our Sun over about 7 hours), a relatively rare event (the next one will occur in 2117). photos of the Sun during the transit show a Venus sized-and-shaped black hole contrasted against our Sun (or, in this case, with inverted images, a Venus sized-and-shapehttp://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/aiahmi/d white hole). this cascading accordion stitches together 31 images from that transit of Venus, side-by-side, in sequence (3.5 inches height by width expandable to 9.75 feet). each image is sourced from NASA's SDO/AIA project, then enlarged, inverted, and excerpted to illustrate the transit as a cascading accordion (as if from the perspective of another craft traveling alongside Venus).

both works are full color inkjet print (mixing 11 pigment inks) on superheavyweight matte plus paper (starting with the 16x36” & 12x36” prints, which are cut, hand-folded, seamed, pressed, and sleeved in studio)