Saturday Classic Artist - Ron Miller

The art work is just breath taking & so the over sized pictures





Ron Miller (born May 8, 1947 in Minneapolis, Minnesota) is an artist and author who lives and works in South Boston, Virginia in the United States. His current work is primarily the writing and illustration of books specializing in astronomical, astronautical and science fiction subjects for young adults.



Ron was the production illustrator on Dune & his work has been seen in Carl Sagan's Cosmos







More can be found Here
 His Website can be found right Here
 Io9 featured an article about a newly discovered planet in its explosive infancy. An except of this article right -
"The youngest planet yet discovered has been found orbiting within the disk of dust and gas surrounding the star Lk Ca 15. The planet is more than just young: it may still be in the process of formation. Estimated at being only 50,000 to 100,000 years old, Lk Ca 15b is probably still accumulating mass as it gathers material from the disk within which it orbits.

Astronomers have long believed that our solar system formed from the vast disk of dust and gas that surrounded the Sun shortly after its birth. This dust and gas was, in fact, the debris left over from the formation of our star (and for this reason these disks are called "debris disks"). This idea got a considerable boost from the discovery of stars surrounded by exactly the sort of dust disks the theory described. The first such disk was found in 1984, circling the star Vega. Eventually, nearly a thousand debris disks have been discovered. Many of these appear to contain planets, further confirming the theory that they are planetary maternity wards.

Lk Ca 15b, however, is the first planet anyone has observed that is still in the process of formation. Indeed, the planet's star itself is only 2 million years old—-a mere baby compared to our 4.6 billion-year-old Sun.

The discovery was made by Adam Kraus, of the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy, and his colleague, Michael Ireland of Macquarie University and the Australian Astronomical Observatory. They used the Keck Observatory telescopes on Mauna Kea. The telescope's deformable mirror combined with a new filtering technique called "aperture mask interferometry" enabled the astronomers to resolve the faint disk—-and eventually the planet itself. "In the past, you couldn't measure this kind of phenomenon," said Kraus, "because it's happening so close to the star. But, for the first time, we've been able to directly measure the planet itself as well as the dusty matter around it."

 The article contained this fantastic illustration on the right! There are other fantastic pieces of information that would make an excellent starting point or ending point for your favorite science fiction table top game! More information from this article can be found Here

 The artist goes into much more detail about his method & process right here. A dungeon master might use this for creating his own worlds & bring even greater detail to adventures! The article is found right Here