I think planets, aliens, and the unknown have always been easy ways to get students to pay attention in their science classes. People are interested in stories about astronauts landing on the moon, if there is water on mars, and whether or not pluto is a real planet. There have been tons of movies about space travel because the unknown has always been extremely appealing to people. People love to romanticize space because there is so much left up to interpretation. Some of these movies are franchises like Star Wars, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Star Trek.
People also have to use art in a way to express what we do know about space. We continue to learn more and more about space everyday, but there is still an insane amount of information that we do not know. We have developed better technology to take pictures of the planets and the moons, but before we had blurry pictures and artists interpretations of these pictures. Chesley Bonestell has a ton of intricate drawings that show what the surface of other planets look like as well as many other aspects of space. We have no real way to confirm these pictures are realistic, but they are drawn so well they look like they are photographs.
Over thousands of years humans created constellations to help us learn which star is which because there is over 1,000 stars that can be seen on a really dark night. Constellations are little "connect the dot" drawings that help us see images in the sky so that we can determine which star is which. Constellations have been an extremely helpful memory device for people to use. It is a lot easier to remember the names of a bunch of dots in the sky when have things to connect them to and ways to remember them.
Sources:
“ARCTIC PERSPECTIVE INITIATIVE.” ARCTIC PERSPECTIVE INITIATIVE, arcticperspective.org/.
Leonardo Space Art Project Visioneers, spaceart.org/leonardo/vision.html.
What Are Constellations?, www.astro.wisc.edu/~dolan/constellations/extra/constellations.html.
“Cosmic Dancer - a Space Art Intervention by Arthur Woods.” Cosmic Dancer 2.0: Arthur Woods : Space Artist, www.cosmicdancer.com/cosmic_dancer_2.0.php.
“Bonestell - Image Gallery.” Chesley Bonestell, www.bonestell.org/Image-Gallery.aspx.
I like how you mentioned that one of the major allures of space was the unknown aspect. This can lead an artist to have flexibility in how they portrays space since there is so much that is not set in stones.
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