Astrophotography from your own backyard
Using telescopes and cameras, astrophotography is just one way that people bring space and art together. While giant space-based telescopes can take stunning pictures, a backyard telescope can capture some incredible images, too.
During a recent telescope viewing and astrophotography exhibit, the Orlando Museum of Art and the Central Florida Astronomical Society, or CFAS, presented 65 astrophotography images of things like planets in our solar system, eclipses and far-away stellar nurseries.
Orlando Museum of Art’s chief curator Coralie Claeysen-Gleyzon said events like this not only inspire others but help inspire herself.
“Every time I'm with CFAS, I feel I'm learning something new,” Claeysen-Gleyzon said. “That's also why we want to highlight them, because there's something about being accessible. This is the name of our day; it's access for all. But what they do is make something that seems unreachable, actually reachable.”
Claeysen-Gleyzon believes that events like this expand visitors’ minds. Her own experience of seeing Saturn through a telescope helped Claeysen-Gleyzon realize that there is always more to understand about our universe. She said “there's greater knowledge out there more things to imagine and discover. I think that's both an element of art and science. There's more to discover.”
Central Florida Astronomical Society’s president, Frank Kane said CFAS is full of both professional astronomers and amateurs. Frank explained that every photo in the exhibit is from CFAS members.
“Some of the planning that goes behind these launch photography shots is just incredible, like we have that shot there from John Starr, and we're looking at a picture of a Falcon 9 rocket going right in front of the moon. It’s hard enough to know where the moon's going to be at a given moment in time, but a Falcon 9 rocket, I don't know how he does it.”
Among the photos at the exhibit were some of Kane’s artwork. One of the pieces included an image called the Soul Nebula. In the middle of the photo, Kane explained that stars are created within the pillars.
“I'm proud of that one, because it actually represents 70 hours of total exposure time,” Kane said. “Obviously done over many, many nights. The detail in there is something I'm really proud of. You get a lot of color depth, because with that much exposure time, you can really pull out the details of the gasses in that nebula and get a really pretty image.”
Among the aim to connect space with art, Kane is hopeful that those who visited the exhibit walk away with what he calls the “cosmic perspective,” an outlook that humans are just a small part of the universe.
“When you think about the scale of the cosmos, it can help you realize that some of our problems here on Earth are maybe petty in comparison,” Kane said.
The future of the space economy and the uncertainty ahead
With new missions and technology that will come online like SpaceX’s Starship and the possibilities surrounding AI technology, 2025 is a big year for space exploration. Plus, under the new administration, SpaceX could play a huge role in the growth of the space economy.
However, as policies begin to change under the new administration, these changes could play a role in the future of the space industry with economic uncertainty.
Space Capital, a seed venture capital firm, released its predictions for the rest of 2025 and what we have seen so far in the first quarter of this year in the Space IQ’s quarterly report.
Chad Anderson is the founder and managing partner at Space Capital. He’s also an investor in SpaceX. He said while we saw space stocks surge in January, Anderson believes we may be close to a recession.
“Most of those gains have been erased and we're starting to see several major financial institutions indicating that there is an increased likelihood of a U.S. recession,” Anderson said. “They're citing pressures from the administration's tariff immigration policies. This was actually, before the tariffs went into place…again we're coming off of a difficult few years”
Based on the report, Anderson explained that orbital traffic is growing at an intensely fast rate starting almost a decade ago. Plus, with the capabilities of Falcon 9 and when Starship comes online, Anderson predicted that the exponential growth of objects in space will continue to increase.
“It's pretty much a straight a flat line, until five, six years ago, when things really start to take off,” Anderson said. “It's not even exponential growth. It is now super exponential growth. The number of satellites in orbit is growing faster than exponentially, it is growing faster than Moore's law.”
While new technologies are coming online, including the development of commercial space stations once the International Space Station retires at the end of the decade, Anderson explained a lot of capital is going into these emerging industries.
“It's easy to get excited about the shiny thing, but you got to be paying attention like the space there's so much going on in the space economy right now that it's so dynamic, and there's these leapfrog technologies that are coming online, you need to be paying attention to how they're going to change things right, and how it's going to accelerate growth in certain markets, and how it's going to create entirely new markets, and how it's going to make some existing infrastructure obsolete.”
