I must have been showing my shock, because he cheerfully changed the subject onto my request to go to JPL for the Voyager flyby. He reiterated the fact that he didn't want HFS to reflect an explicit association with Jupiter. I said I understood that perfectly that it was to be a portrayal of a hypothetical but generic gas giant world. But it was nevertheless an important opportunity to gain an insight into gas giant atmospheres. After all, Jupiter is a gas giant planet - and nobody had ever seen what those clouds really look like at the sub-km resolution that Voyager would soon return. I considered it vitally important to the painting, and I said so. It really is that important if an artist is expected to realize a visualization with maximum realism and accuracy. (It is generally under-appreciated that the task of portrayal compels artists to explicitly define the subject - we can't always enjoy the luxury of ambiguity in dealing with our subjects). I added that those monitors around the side of the auditorium lobby were all I wanted to be able to sit in front of so I could sketch and take notes. He smiled and nodded and said, "Good! I'll arrange it!" And with that our meeting ended.

So I was there at JPL during the flyby. As full of people as the auditorium was, that corner was deserted and eerily quiet all that night. But I didn't pay much attention to that. My eyes and attention were glued to the monitors and I was soaking in every image that came up. It was a mesmerizing night; it was as if my mind was transported to the spacecraft. The memory of it often returns to haunt me in quiet moments to this day...and, yes, it contributed a great deal - in some places crucially - to HFS. The main insight that was impressed on me that night was the prevalence of vortices and eddies, as especially evident in the turbulent region downstream of the GRS, and in the interactions between ovals and along the boundaries between bands and zones, right down to the limit of resolution. In suitably turbulent regions, vortices and eddies were evident down to the limit of resolution. That was the single most important insight I derived. It suggests the preponderance of vortices below mesocyclone scale, and the vigorous convection evident in many regions is more than sufficient implication: Jupiter and many other gas giant worlds with deep convective atmospheres must be full of tornadoes at every scale from the monstrous down to whirlwinds.

One consequence of the insight on the mural appeared in the form of a large cyclone reddened by a high population density of "Sinkers" (the analogue of plankton in earth's oceans) concentrated there to exploit nutrients updrafted from the depths below. Sinkers are comparatively tiny, ranging from microbial to large party balloons in size (many of the larger examples ranging upwards toward weather-balloon-size being newborn and juvenile Floaters and Hunters), so we only see the reddish coloration of the vortex from a distance of a few hundred kilometers, but their presence is also indicated by what they have attracted: a congregation of "Floaters" lazily grazing on them or giving birth to them in great numbers over the spot, in a vaguely helical pattern resembling the molecule of life. Strong convection and turbulence in Jovian atmospheres is often cited as a detriment to the evolution of organisms within them, yet such cyclones can conceivably play a crucially important role in concentrating nutrients and provide stable refuges.

I also added a more conventionally recognizable 'twister' emerging out from the ceiling of the canopy at the upper left because I wanted to give the camera a chance to come across one unobstructed funnel, and there was no other convenient place to place it. Its bothered me because strong vertical convection of the sort typically required to form them would normally not be taking place within a laminar stratus plume of that kind. It was placed there for the convenience of the shoot: it wouldn't be very noticeable in the long shots, but only when the camera panned over the region at close quarters, making the ceiling resemble the base of a convective cell.

I spent an estimated average of 4 hours of our typical 14-hour day on it every day over the following 7 or 8 months. Some days it was difficult to find a half hour for it - on those days I was too exhausted from pressing duties elsewhere in the fx production. To my dismay that workload had increased apace with the added challenge of filling out nine entire panels for HFS. The docket was exhausting.

I don't recall what month HFS was finally ready for the shoot. (I was far too exhausted by then to notice and, frankly, the Southern California climate doesn't provide one who grew up in the upper Midwest and used to annual snowfall enough cues to impress what season it might be...but I think it had neared the end of 1979 by the time I had finished HFS for the shoot). I do remember that the final push was a 2-week period staying permanently awake, like a zombie. It's like sleepwalking, except that though you know (or think you know) you are awake and your eyes are open, you are in a constant dreaming state. It was dreadful. I don't remember anything I painted during those closing weeks except for flashes of the final touch-ups on the stage at KCET. But I do remember it took me a very long time to recover.

The sequence was shot with director Adrian Malone having Carl physically walking, speaking and gesturing in front of it. Adrian meticulously choreographed the camera moves that panned over and zoomed into sections of the mural to show some of the detail in it with Carl's narrative voice-over. I was not present at the shoot: I was passed out in bed in our new apartment in Santa Monica, not remembering how I got there. I think I was out for almost 3 days. After HFS there were odds and ends as the work load rapidly eased off. It was the last major artwork or fx sequence of the production. It was rescheduled that way to help give me all the time possible (I'm pretty sure, under Carl's instructions) but it was The Monster among monsters.

Later the next year after Cosmos had aired, I and my fellow vfx colleagues (belonging to both the Cosmos Artists team and the crew who worked at Magicam noteworthy for their excellent Alexandrian Library and the Cosmic Calendar sequences) were awarded the 1980 Prime-Time Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement, Creative Technical Crafts. We assembled up on the stage and accepted the award to a long ovation. To my consternation my colleagues kept ushering me forward toward the dais to make the first comments. I was reluctant - I'm not good at speaking, let alone publicly. All I could manage was to thank my parents and a special friend for their support. But the one person who inspired me to explore the possibilities more than any other was Carl Sagan.