Look at a Moon atlas, and you’ll see a land populated with the names of philosophers, mathematicians, and astronomers. Great men like Plato, Aristarchus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, and Planck have been immortalized by naming Moon craters after them, cementing their names in the firmament. But – what about the women? Out of the 1,578 cataloged and named craters on the lunar surface, 32 are named after women – that is barely 2%. SETI Artist in Residence Program Director Bettina Forget found this percentage to be "disappointingly low", so she decided to highlight the issue through her artwork.

After researching the locations of the lunar craters named after women using data from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, Bettina created a series of 32 drawings on paper, using acrylic paint and graphite. Each drawing is a portrait of a crater, accentuating topographical features, textures, and shadowing. That project became even larger when Bettina began working on portraits of each crater using acrylic paint in vibrant shades of red and pink.

Now, three of those paintings are part of The Life Cycle of Celestial Objects exhibit at the McIntosh Gallery in London, Ontario. Join communications specialist Beth Johnson in a one-on-one discussion with Bettina about this visually stunning project in our monthly SETI AIR episode of SETI Live. (Recorded 26 October 2023.)