Beyond the Pale Blue Dot

Altough we equate the colour blue with life Blue is not necessarily an indication that a planet is habitable.

The is an illustration i made for Nautilus magazine about how the colour blue through popular culture has come to signify life. Yet it when it comes down to the hard science it is rarely an indication that an exoplanet is habitable. 
The Flash Gordon movie from 1980 is one of my all time favourite films and has certainly filtered it's way into this.
The idea was to create an inhospitipal yet aesthetically pleasing alien environment. I have an ongoing fascination with layers of geologic strata and erosion and wanted to depict something that looks like it been shaped by 3000 mile an hour winds over millions of years at incomprehensible tempatures. That, and play around making trippy curves. 
This is an alternative letterbox version for the online edition.
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