Miller says he's always loved astronomy. "It helped to grow up in the Sputnik and Mercury program days, when you couldn't open your eyes without seeing something about rockets," he writes. But an "utter ineptitude with math" led him to pursue his interest via a different path: art. For five years he was the art director at the National Air & Space Museum.

Mars

Miller likens the work of being a space artist to the crafts of forensic and paleontological arts, both of which require their practitioners to rely on small bits of information -- bones, fossils, other clues -- to imagine what something once looked like. Or, in this case, what it would look like, were the solar system radically different, and Jupiter were our very close neighbor.

Jupiter

"Of course," he continues, "the role of being an inspiration is important, too. Space artists have in fact been an important factor in the history of the development of space flight and have additionally inspired hundreds of people to pursue careers in astronomy or astronautics." He points to a painting by Chesley Bonestell from 1944 of Saturn as it would appear from its moon, Titan, once described as "the painting that launched a thousand careers." Here's how it would appear here from Earth, if it were at the distance of our moon:

Saturn

No offense to our moon, but imagine looking up in the sky and seeing this:

Uranus

Or this:

Neptune

Miller thinks that the night sky shapes who we are, and having a huge other planet so large would change us. "'We would all feel a lot more humble with Jupiter's presence constantly looking over us," he told The Daily Mail.

Editor's note: For more, check out Miller's essay about his work, published on io9, and his personal site.