Context

This project explores Venus in its dual conception as Earth’s twin planet and as a repository for 2032 places named after renowned women and mythological females of Earth. Overlooked in recent space science and deemed of marginal significance in recent western cultural imagination, Venus is on the cusp of new era of discovery with the ESA-NASA missions due to launch from 2031.  

Since late 2021, Lily has rendered more than 90 sites on the surface of Venus in detailed paintings. These painted images are based on scientific imaging of the surface of Venus made by Synthetic Aperture Radar, mostly from the NASA Mariner 10 mission of 1974.

As of 2023, the project has been extended to a research collaboration with scientists leading the next space mission to explore Venus in 2031.

Fifty Venusian Features

This slide show presents the first fifty paintings made from the NASA radar images in 2022– 2023. There is a crater named for the Ancient Greek astronomer Aglaonice, or Ba‘het Corona dedicated to the Egyptian personification of abundance, and Wheatley crater for Phillis Wheatley the first black writer to be recognised in the United States of America. Lise Meitner, the Nobel prize winning Austrian-Swedish physicist has her own crater, while Baker crater is named in memory of the French-American pilot, activist and performer Josephine Baker.

Cosmos Projects