Portrait of ZThe Art and Science of Making Stars
A portrait commemorating the landmark experiments
that transformed astronomy from observation into experiment.
Original painting sold.
Fine art editions available.
Small format prints from $199.
At Sandia National Laboratories, the Z Machine was harnessed to recreate something previously accessible only across the distances of space: the plasma conditions found in the photosphere of a white dwarf star. Concentrating an immense pulse of electrical power into a tiny experimental target allowed astrophysicists to create stellar conditions here on Earth, measure them directly, and compare them with observations of actual stars.
A science defined by distance had acquired a new form of proximity.
The Z Machine, firing.
Z is an extraordinary architecture of concentrated power. Electrical energy accumulated across the immense machine is released in a pulse lasting roughly 100 nanoseconds, producing up to 80 terawatts of peak electrical power. The achievement lies in that extraordinary compression: gathering energy across a machine of enormous scale and concentrating it into an almost imperceptible instant, creating conditions otherwise found in some of the most extreme environments in the universe.
Portrait of Z approaches this extraordinary instrument through the tradition of portraiture, commemorating not simply what the machine looks like, but what it made possible.
Working from a fisheye photograph captured during a firing sequence, its architecture, color and energy were extended through oil paint rather than literally reproduced. As in portraiture throughout art history, the intention was not simply to reproduce the subject, but to make its character perceptible.
The machine became both subject and monument, a portrait of human ingenuity at a threshold in the history of science.
In 2012, the University of Texas College of Natural Sciences brought astrophysicist Don Winget and artist Leah Flippen together for a short documentary exploring the Z Machine, the painting it inspired, and the intersection of artistic and scientific inquiry.
Z Machine: The Art and Science of Making White Dwarfs in the DesertUniversity of Texas at Austin — College of Natural Sciences, 2012
Portrait of Z and the research that inspired it were documented across university, science, technology and national media in 2012.
- The University of Texas at Austin — Z Machine
- The University of Texas at Austin — Making Stars
- TIME — Z Machine Produces Six Times the World's Energy to Create White Dwarf Star
- The Atlantic — The World's Largest X-Ray Generator, the Z Machine, Inspires Art
- Discover Magazine — A Dying Star Is Reborn in a Lab
- Gizmodo / io9 — How Astronomers Use the World's Largest X-Ray Generator to Create White Dwarfs on Earth
Discover Magazine, 2012.