Kagaya Yutaka (real name Minoru Kagaya) is a Japanese digital artist and photographer. He is famous in Japan for his creations depicting constellations and space-related visuals.
Kagaya Yutaka graduated from the Tokyo Designer Gakuin College (Department of the Tokyo Netwave). After graduation, he published his first photography book, The Encyclopedia of the Four Seasons, and then shifted towards computer arts to create all of his paintings.
Kagaya Yukata is an illustrator for the astronomy magazine Hoshi Navi, and designed numerous all-sky movies. In 2003, the International Astronomical Union awarded his work by naming the asteroid number 11949 ” Kagaya Yukata” . In 2011, he created the planetarium projection for the concert of the Japanese singer Nana Mizuki in the Tokyo Dome.
The work of Kagaya Yutaka is celestial and brightly colorful. With a focus on light through the darkness, it depicts terrestrial and extra-terrestrial universes. The colors are often cold (dark blue or purple, sometimes fire-like hues) and invite the viewer to project himself/herself in a magical, astronomy-dominated world. When a person is depicted in one if his creations, it is usually an observer of the wide skies. The geometry of the universe is heavily present and seems to dominate every composition of the artist. His work propels his audience into a fairy imagination where space and earth are one unified and beautiful whole, an hymn to the mythological godliness of astrophysics.
Also check out his breathtaking photos of the Antarctic.