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The Star Spot


The Star Spot, with Justin Trottier, is a space themed podcast and radio show focusing on all aspects of astronomy and space exploration. Episodes feature timely news along with fascinating interviews with guests of wide-ranging background: scientists, engineers, artists, politicians, and entrepreneurs. Topics are broad, from the latest space mission to how the universe began to why humans explore.

Jan 13, 2014

Feature Guest: Catherine Hazin

We begin our coverage of the 2013 Canadian Space Summit held in Ottawa in November 2013, with the first of five feature Star Spot interviews with guests at the Summit.

Co-host Denise Fong was pleased to be joined by artist Catherine Hazin at The Star Spot on location. Catherine was showcasing artwork on behalf of over 50 internationally acclaimed space artists as part of the Canadian Space Summit’s space art exhibition: The Inexorable Revolutions of Art.

Denise and Catherine discuss the little trodden territory where science and art overlap and the link between art and space exploration. What is the function that art serves for space exploration and what value does it add to the human interest in observing the Universe and in contemplating our ultimate human frontiers?


Historically in the 1800s, artists accompanied explorers on their excursions to discover the frontier of America, and their contributions to communicating the images of the new lands were prolific and highly valued, from the paintings of Thomas Moran and Albert Bierstadt to Frederick Church, considered the highest paid painter of his day in 1872. More often than not, Church was able to finance his very own exploratory expeditions by painting Earth’s new wonders, like the north pole Aurorae, icebergs of the Arctic sea, and volcanoes in South America.

The wonders of earth when they were first discovered inspired volumes of artwork and depicted places not yet known such as Yellowstone, and Yosemite, now protected national parks in the West. Today these visuals of the previously unknown American Western frontier serve to document our human heritage, and were the basis of immense inspiration, sense of adventure, risk, danger, and of the unknown.

So bringing to the present what we have seen from history, what about the artist’s role today for the human exploration…of space – the final frontier?


Denise and Catherine discuss the renaissance in the connection between art and the nature of exploration and discovery. How relevant is space art today? What function does it serve space exploration? Is it possible for artists’ impressions, and artistic works, to disappear into history just as it did alongside the disappearance of Earth’s new frontier lands? And if we leave out the art, how would space exploration suffer? 

Current in Space

Dave shares the first cloudy weather forecast for a Super Earth extrasolar planet. Then Arjun excites us with new data anticipated from the spacecraft GAIA, a super sensitive billion pixel camera set to survey a billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy (and costing some billion dollars). Finally Benjamin on how disappointment quickly turned to delight when researchers with the Hunt for Extromoons with Kepler (HECK) project made one heck of a discovery: no moon but the least massive gaseous world we've yet found.

About Catherine Hazin

Catherine Hazin is a professional writer and artist who received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Alberta College of Art and Design. She co-founded the Alberta Chapter of the Canadian Space Society in 2011, and is currently the Arts and Culture Director for the Canadian Space Society.


Catherine also has a love of fashion design and wearable art. She is the Editor of Luxe Magazine, and a senior writer for Calgary Bride. She is also the Fashion and Performance Coordinator for “Make Fashion,” the annual fashion show held in Calgary, Canada. Catherine is devoted to promoting and encouraging collaborations between artists and space science professionals in order to better engage the public, and communicate the accomplishments and the needs of the space industry. and she presented her work to the attendees of the Canadian Space Summit in November 2012, in Calgary.