Our Beautiful Universe Art Exhibition 

In July, hundreds of astronomers from around the world will gather in Warwick to talk about their exciting research into all things astronomy at the National Astronomy Meeting . And we would love to have some beautiful space-themed art work to show them. 

So we are calling on people of all ages to create and send us pictures of works of art! Below we have included some information about some of the science topics we will discuss at the conference which you might use as inspiration, but feel free to get creative with the space theme!

We are accepting pictures of your submissions (.jpg, .png) through our website here!

Your masterpiece will be displayed on the NAM2022 website here and might be featured at our in person exhibition on Wednesday 13th July! 

For consideration for our in-person exhibit please submit your entry by the 8th July, but all entries submitted up to the 13th July will be featured in our virtual gallery! 

Space Exploration Space is really big, and some of the things we like to look at are really far away, so we only know so much about the Universe because we build telescopes that let us see things in ways we can’t with our own eyes. Sometimes we build telescopes here on Earth, sometimes we send them up to space and sometimes we send probes and satellites out to other places in the Solar System. Each of these exciting pieces of technology gives us a new interesting piece of the puzzle that is space. If you had to build a spacecraft to go to another planet, what would it look like?
Stars We see billions of stars in the Milky Way - some look like our Sun, but others look very different. They can range hugely in size and colour, some even come in pairs and triples! After they are born in large groups called clusters, stars live their lives with their own planet systems and then change into completely new types of stars as they age. Each star has its own piece of important information to tell us about the science behind them. Do you have a favourite star? What do you think it looks like?
Transients Space is a very busy place and when we look it is constantly changing. At the end of the lives of the most massive stars, they explode like fireworks that can be seen across the cosmos. By studying these ‘transients’ we can learn more about the stars in our own galaxy, what the Universe was like back in time when they existed, and can even use them to measure how far away galaxies are. We can only see these as tiny dots of light on the sky because of how far away they are, but what do you think these stellar fireworks look like up close?
Beyond our Galaxy Our Solar System lives in the Milky Way, a regular spiral galaxy, which is just one of trillions in our local supercluster, each of which has billions of stars. As we look further out into the Universe we see galaxies as they were in the distant past, hungry black holes feeding on gas and the very first stars to light up the Universe. It is still a mystery how galaxies get so big, and why they all look so different to each other. We think most galaxies have a black hole at their very centre, but they’re so dense not even light can escape from them and we can’t see what they look like! Do you have a favourite galaxy?
The Solar System There is plenty going on in our own Solar System too; there are planets with moons and even rings, asteroids and comets and of course, our own beautiful blue planet! Even our own Sun is active and constantly changing, firing out jets of plasma and magnetic winds which interact with the Earth to create incredible things like the Northern Lights. We know a lot about the Solar System thanks to a fleet of spacecraft and space telescope exploring for us, but there are still plenty of new things to discover. What is your favourite thing in the Solar System?
Exoplanets We now know of over 5000 exoplanets across the Milky Way. These planets don’t all like those we see in our Solar System, some are really big or really small, some are so close to their stars that they are burning hot, while others are so far away they are ice worlds. Some of these planets live in the habitable zone, which means their temperature is just right for life to potentially form, although we haven’t found any proof of aliens just yet. But because the other worlds are so far away, we don’t know what they actually look like - what do you think an exoplanet would look like?