Cosmic Dawn

Editorial Science Illustration • Scientific American • 2025
Stylized, conceptual illustration of the cosmic dawn: a period roughly 100-200 million years after the Big Bang, when the first stars and galaxies started to form. These cosmic structures pour out of a funnel representing spacetime. The funnel, in turn, arises from a bright crescent with a starburst, which resembles a sun rising behind a planet in space. Art by Olena Shmahalo for Scientific American.

FOR
Scientific American, 2025
Thanks to Michael Mrak

WORK
Concepts, illustration

TOOLS
C4D, CSP, Procreate

INFO
Stylized, conceptual illustration of the "cosmic dawn": a period roughly 100-200 million years after the Big Bang, when the first stars and galaxies started to form. These cosmic structures pour out of a funnel representing spacetime. The funnel, in turn, arises from a bright crescent with a starburst, which resembles a sun rising behind a planet in space.

For a Scientific American article by Rebecca Boyle: Astronomers’ Epic Quest to Witness the Cosmic Dawn

Sketches representing stylized, conceptual takes on the idea of a cosmic dawn, including visual nods toward the lunar experiments described in the article. Art by Olena Shmahalo for Scientific American.

Some of the rough, early concept sketches.

The final process included creating and rendering the funnel and shadows of reionization bubbles in 3D, and then painting in the stars and galaxies.

Screenshot of an article on Scientific American, titled Astronomers' Epic Quest to Witness the Cosmic Dawn. Subhed: A new generation of telescopes could peer back to the earliest epochs of the universe. By Rebecca Boyle, edited by Clara Moskowitz. Conceptual illustration of a cosmic dawn by Olena Shmahalo.

© Olena Shmahalo