Artist Project / The Celestial Incorporation Project

The Celestial Incorporation project will ultimately collapse the entire visible universe into one massive image. I begin with data downloaded from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a public image database of the universe, which will eventually contain about 10,000 square degrees of sky (about 1/4 of the universe). With the help of Todd Boroson, deputy director of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, Arizona, I have designed software that enables me to remove the black background (empty space). It locates the celestial bodies (stars, galaxies, and asteroids) and moves them to form a central cluster. This celestial ball will eventually contain all visible matter in the universe, creating an absurd visual representation of the entire universe collapsed to its ‘original’ massive form. The image presented here is a compressed version of 25 square degrees of universe.
—Lee Boroson