Boudenib 004

NEIL BUCKLAND  

BOUDENIB 004  

signed by the artist  

thin-section print on archival paper  

48 x 36 inches (121.92 × 91.44 cm)  

Executed in 2026.

This print is made to order by Neil Buckland from a thin-section microphotograph of the Boudenib 004 Martian shergottite (see Lot 23). The stone's defining feature — its unusually elongate bladed pyroxene crystals, found in no other known Martian meteorite — becomes fully visible only at this scale. Working from a single thin section cut to approximately 30 microns, Buckland uses a custom-built micro-panoramic imaging microscope of his own design to capture hundreds of individual photographs, assembling them into a seamless photomosaic; transmitted light resolves the geometry of individual crystals, the orientation of their growth, and the composition of the surrounding matrix. Each print is produced by the artist in archival inks on a 12-color pigment-based fine art printer.

This thin section image captured in partially cross-polarized transmitted light shows large prismatic crystals (called phenocrysts) of pyroxene, which crystallized first from the parent magma, within a much finer grained, more rapidly cooled polycrystalline groundmass.

Buckland's Cosmic Microscapes bridge art and science and have been featured in galleries and museums around the country, international scientific conferences, and published in WIRED magazine, The Meteorite Times, and peer reviewed scientific papers.