The Art of Astrophysics

Astrophysicists try to share the mysteries of the Universe around us in a clear and understandable fashion, but we don't always succeed. It's a hard challenge - the wonders of the Solar System, the Galaxy, and the ever expanding Cosmos demand more of our imaginations than can be captured by numbers in a table or terms in an equation. However, a work of art can uniquely inspire us to look closely, to dream freely, to understand openly - anything from the smallest curiosity to the biggest discovery.

So, we asked members of the MIT community to create works of art that help us visualize our Universe and how we observe it. Whether you're a photographer or a poet, a crafter or a coder, a musician or a moviemaker, we want you to use your talents and creativity to illuminate the beauty of astrophysical results.

We had a great response to this year's Art of Astrophysics competition hosted during MIT's 2014 Independent Activities Period (IAP) and sponsored by the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. The 2014 Art of Astrophysics competition is over. We are currently planning to repeat this competition for MIT's *next* IAP in January 2016. Please check out this year's entries and start thinking about possible projects you might want to create for the next competition! If you're around the MIT, please join us for our series of astrophysics-themed IAP talks during January 2015.

Many thanks to the members of the greater MIT community who submitted such incredible pieces of artwork to this year's Art of Astrophysics Competition. We received 49 beautiful and thought-provoking entries to this year's competition, which can be viewed on our MIT Art of Astrophysics flickr page. As announced at the brief gallery exhibit held in Lobby 10 on the MIT campus on January 31, 2014, the prize-winning pieces for this year are:

Participating is easy. Simply submit works of art somehow related to astronomy/astrophysics! There are two basic rules:

The artwork must be creative.

The artwork must teach us something about the Universe.

Feel free to interpret "artwork" however you like. Maybe for you it means time lapse photos of star trails over Cambridge, or sonifications of satellite data, or landscape paintings of starset on extrasolar planets, or blown glass brown dwarfs, or animations of the world seen through microwave eyes, or knitted galaxies, or ceramic telescope teacups, or absolutely anything else! We've included links to some projects online that might inspire you, and we hope you'll let your creativity run wild!

If you would like to contribute but don't know where to begin, please contact us! If you're an artist in search of an idea to represent, we can find astronomers with whom you can collaborate. If you're a scientist wondering how to tackle an art project, we can help point you in the right direction. We're happy to help brainstorm, to try to track down techniques or supplies, and to bring people together to collaborate and learn from each other.

The competition culminated in a brief exhibition of the submitted works on Friday, January 31 on the MIT campus. Photos of this event can be found on our flickr page.