(translated: The Cosmographic Mystery)
Truly fascinated by platonic solids and how beautifully they fit into each other, I felt the need to sketch Kepler's Platonic solid model of the solar system from Mysterium Cosmographicum.
This is Pencil on Paper Triptych, and to my surprise, I used a 0.5mm mechanical pencil. I usually shy away from sharp tipped mechanical pencils because they create pronounced streaks that don't particularly blend well. But this artwork demanded such salient streaks to enhance the depth in the geometric solids.
So, Johannes Kepler, a German Mathematician, Astronomer and Astrologer realised that each of the following solids: cube, tetrahedron, dodecahedron, icosahedron and octahedron, can be encased in a sphere and nested in a unique way-- such that the spheres correspond to the relative orbits of planets.
However, this beautiful model isn't particularly precise (based on the astronomical observations and measurements we make today). It doesn't account for Uranus and Neptune either.
Yet, I really appreciate this thought process and am amazed by it. What do you think?
Image credits:
Nested Platonic Solids: Miscellaneous Abstracts. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://artiodactyl.artstation.com/projects/XBd3v0
Platonic Solids: Steward, D. (n.d.). 3D geometry: Platonic solids. Retrieved from https://donsteward.blogspot.com/2018/04/3d-geometry-platonic-solids.html
Combinations: Vreken, D. (1970, January 01). Platonic Solids. Retrieved from http://lostmathlessons.blogspot.com/2017/08/platonic-solids.html