Light's Secret Code

Editorial Science Illustration • BBC Science Focus • 2025
Stylized illustration of ingredients (magnetism, gravity, rotation) flowing out of their vials and pouring into an AGN (Active Galactic Nucleus, e.g. quasar) inside a cauldron in space. Art by Olena Shmahalo for BBC Science Focus.

FOR
BBC Science Focus, 2025
Thanks to AD Joe Eden

WORK
Concepts, illustration, animation

TOOLS
CSP, Procreate, Procreate Dreams

INFO
Stylized illustration: ingredients for astrophysical jets (magnetism, gravity, and rotation), floating out of their vials and pouring into a cauldron containing an AGN (active galactic nucleus, e.g. quasars, blazars, and others).

For the print edition of a column on BBC Science Focus, by Dr Katie Mack: "Cosmic jets: How some of the most violent (and beautiful) phenomena in the Universe are born" / print title: "The simple recipe for making astrophysical jets".

Preliminary sketches: various ideas showing AGNs with jets, labeled: A. Recipe for an AGN – Ingredients = magnetism, gravity, rotation. B. Battle of the Blazars! [witches in space battling with staves that are actually the jets of an AGN, with the star/nucleus as the staff's tip and an accretion disk forming around it]. C / D. Jets & Discs / with graphics – Smaller AGNs & elliptical galaxy clusters in the background. Graphics = gravity mesh, magnetic fields, rotation arrows. E. Stellar Violence – Stylized single AGN, explosive and dynamic!

Concept sketches

Photo of a spread in BBC Science Focus magazine, of an article by Dr. Katie Mack titled: The simple recipe for making astrophysical jets. At the top is a stylized illustration of ingredients (magnetism, gravity, rotation) flowing out of their vials and pouring into an AGN (Active Galactic Nucleus, e.g. quasar) inside a cauldron in space. Art by Olena Shmahalo for BBC Science Focus.

Photograph of the article in print


Screenshot of a Q&A with Katie Mack on Quanta Magazine: This Cosmologist Knows How It’s All Going to End. Art directed by Olena Shmahalo

© Olena Shmahalo