Turkish student wins global contest with Mars painting

RİZE

A 13-year-old student from the northern province of Sinop has become the global winner of the Space Art 2022 contest held by the European Astronomy Association with a painting of the Olympus Mons on Mars.

The association chose Beray Kahraman’s work, in which she resembled the Solar System’s highest mountain to a dandelion.

“To tell the truth, I was surprised when I heard the news that I won,” Kahraman told daily Milliyet on May 11.

When asked how she thought of the mountain as a dandelion, she said, “I just imagined what it would look like if Olympus Mons would extravasate white cotton rather than lava.”

“When I saw the aerial photos of the mountain, I then realized that it would look like a dandelion, so I started painting,” she added.

With a height of 21.9 kilometers, Olympus Mons is about two and a half times Mount Everest’s height above the sea level. Located in Mars’s western hemisphere, Olympus Mons is the youngest of the large volcanoes on the Red Planet.