Joe Tucciarone

    Joe Tuccciarone has been painting space scenes since he was eight years old and made his professional debut at the Memphis Museum planetarium in 1978. Using acrylic paints, he creates wondrous scenes of exploding stars, planets, galaxies, nebulae, comets and other heavenly bodies as well as constellations and dinosaurs. Each of his paintings comes with a detailed description, so his work not only pleases the eye but also educates the mind.

    Joe has been recognized by his college alma mater, Youngstown State University in Ohio, with a honorary doctorate for lifetime achievement in science illustration.

    And TV's famed Star Gazer, Jack Horkheimer, says, "Tucciarone's paintings are undoubtedly the most beautiful and sensual portrayals of space I have ever seen."

5 Billion AD

Five billion years from now our sun will swell and become a red giant star, engulfing the innermost planets. When it exhausts the last of its nuclear fuel it may cast off a planetary nebula, a glowing shell of expanding gases, as it quickly dwindles and becomes a white dwarf star. In this view, the shimmering ring of gas expands toward the lifeless earth and moon.

Firefall

A hail of meteorites rains upon the lifeless surface of the newly formed earth. Although catastrophic bombardments like this ceased ages ago, thrilling showers of meteors still occur.Each year in late November, the earth passes through a stream of debris shed by Comet Tempel-Tuttle, resulting in the Leonid meteor shower, named for the constellation Leo from which they seem to radiate. Once every thirty-three years, the earth encounters a dense cloud of particles near the comet itself, sometimes producing an intense firestorm of "falling stars." Spectacular displays of the Leonids occurred in 1833, 1966 and 2002.

Nightfall Over Titan

Reminiscent of Chesley Bonestell's Saturn As Seen From Titan, Joe has this to say about the scene:The giant moon Titan reigns as king of Saturn's horde of icy satellites. Larger than the planets Pluto and Mercury, Titan is second only to Jupiter's moon Ganymede as the largest of the 100+ known moons in our solar system. A reddish, smoggy atmosphere completely enshrouds this big moon and prevents any glimpse of the sky beyond. In this view high above the clouds and haze we see the giant planet Saturn and several of its inner moons.

To see more of Joe's amazing work, take the spaceship to his website