A paintbrush, an easel, a canvas, some paint. It used to be that works of art were created using a no frills set of materials like that, with maybe a color palette or a beret thrown in for good measure. While we’re far removed from the heyday of the French Impressionists, it’s likely that even the most forward-thinking of contemporary artists working with the most advanced tools of the trade wouldn’t know how to operate a telescopic coronagraph. But that’s exactly what was used by researchers in the American Museum of Natural History’s Department of Astrophysics to capture the spectacular image of an unknown star in the Big Dipper for an out-of-this-world work of art.
     Titled “A Star Is Found,” and bearing resemblance to some menacing aquatic invertebrate or an experiment with green gelatin gone wrong, the image was never meant to hang on the walls of a gallery. Rather, it is an accidental masterpiece created in the pursuit of scientific research. A new star was discovered, and in the process, so was an unexpected thing of beauty – or something close to beauty, anyway. For the new exhibit “Picturing Science,” the museum’s curators have assembled a collection of spectacular prints that were produced with the same basic approach.