The name ‘Lucien Rudaux’ will probably not ring a bell, but the French astronomer-artist is credited as the grandfather of modern space art for his strikingly accurate depictions of the solar system during his heyday in the 1920s and 30s.
Rudaux joined the French astronomical society at the age of 18, and was one of the first people to observe a solar flare in white light. Between 1892 and 1914, he published numerous reports of this and similar observations in the society bulletin.
He even built a private observatory near the coast of Normandy, from which he captured never-before-seen photographs of the moon, planets and the Milky Way. His masterpiece, a 1937 coffee-book titled Sur les Autres Mondes (On Other Worlds), featured over 400 illustrations, including over 20 full-page color paintings. It was a ground breaking piece of work in its showcase of solar planets rendered in spectacular true-to-life detail.
Rudaux’s drawings of the moon were especially remarkable; where other artists depicted a rocky landscape dotted by rough, thorny peaks, his versions featured rounded mountains and a smooth terrain, just like the photographs taken by Apollo astronauts.
Over the course of his life, Rudaux created astonishing portraits of solar eclipses, Saturn’s rings, Jupiter, Venus, and Mars, even envisioning what the worlds circling other stars might look like.
Rudaux died in 1947, and a crater on Mars was named after him.
View some marvellous pictures of his celestial landscapes below.
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