A new piece written in February 2026, dedicated to the brightest jewel of the spring sky: Spica.
The spring sky may not be as crowded with stars as the winter one, but when the snow begins to melt, three stars command the attention of the Northern Hemisphere. Spica, the alpha of the constellation Virgo, takes center stage in this celestial dance.
This melody is my tribute to her. Spica is a truly fascinating system—more than just a single star, it’s a complex world of its own that scientists are only just beginning to understand.
Alan Midkiff, an American Airlines pilot and astronomy enthusiast, has completed construction of a "small" observatory on his country property
People usually imagine an observatory as a tower with a rotating dome or hinged roof (although, formally, an observatory is an organization, not a structure). It's the creation of all these rotating and hinged roofs and domes that presents the main challenge (sometimes a telescope isn't as complex and expensive as its tower and dome). But what if we approach it fundamentally differently? We make the telescopes retractable… That's exactly what they do with small, portable telescopes. And what if the telescope is enormous? Well, then it can be rolled out from under the canopy using a special forklift…
In short, Alan Midkiff has suddenly broken the mold and the notion of what an amateur observatory can be. It's worth noting that his telescopes are truly impressive — the 10-inch Zeiss (25 cm objective lens diameter) and the 50-inch Dobsonian (127 cm mirror diameter) are simply incredible monsters for an amateur observatory. The instruments are rolled out onto the platform along a special track and secured into pre-designed mounts, allowing for their correct orientation to be quickly restored.
This is some astronomical creativity from a professional pilot.
Nowadays, literally any configuration of luminaries can be called a parade of planetes. And they do. And it doesn't matter that it's not visible. So what's visible now?
The essence of the current planetary configuration (as of the evening of January 22, 2026) is that three planets—Mercury, Venus, and Mars—are aligned in the direction of the Sun (as seen from Earth). Furthermore, if you look at them from the solar system's pole (see the picture in plan), all three of these planets will be practically on the same line, but on the other side of the Sun—relative to Earth (the Sun is between Earth and this "Trinity").
Furthermore, further beyond the orbit of Mars, the asteroid Vesta, the largest minor planet in the asteroid belt, will also be on this same line. Vesta is the largest minor planet in the asteroid belt, and its origin may be nothing more than the core of a failed major planet between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. This isn't mentioned in the frivolous media, but Vesta is also participating in this parade.
But that's not all
Jupiter suddenly appears on our side of the Sun, almost in the same straight line. On January 10th, it passed opposition with the Sun, and this configuration hasn't yet broken up—12 days—not that long. With Jupiter, this so-called parade now includes six luminaries. However, only two are visible—the Sun and Jupiter. The rest are buried in the outer solar corona (from the perspective of an observer on Earth) and remain inaccessible even to space telescopes—those orbiting close to Earth.
Jupiter is now perfectly visible—all night long, high in the sky—in the center of the constellation Gemini.
Uranus is quite clearly visible (though not with the naked eye, but with lite optics)—in the constellation Taurus, directly below the Pleiades.
Saturn (with the naked eye) and Neptune (with a telescope) can be seen briefly above the southwestern horizon after sunset. This coming evening, January 22nd, a young and still rather thin crescent moon will shine near these two planets. However, the period of visibility for Saturn and Neptune is rapidly ending. They will soon disappear from the evening sky.
However, starting in early February, Mercury and Venus will appear in the evening sky. Mercury will remain there until mid-March, and Venus will linger until the end of summer (we are now on the threshold of another period of evening visibility for Venus).
As for Mars and Vesta, these celestial bodies will appear in the morning sky, but not until late spring or closer to summer. They will be joined by Saturn and Neptune, meaning that we can expect at least another "Parade of Planets" in the foreseeable future.
Friends, many of you have already watched and listened to all 10 tracks on the album «Deep Cosmos 2025». What else is left? Maybe combining them into one continuous space journey? Not a bad idea! And I've already done that. I'm sharing this 66-minute video with you.
We think of space expansion primarily as a search for a planet suitable for our biology. The issue of fine-tuning is considered if the celestial body does not exactly meet our refined requirements. We don't mind terraforming Mars or Venus if there isn't a better one available. But what if our true role is not that of the user, but of the creator?
It's not that there are few or no suitable planets in our Galaxy. Let's leave aside the transformations and mutations that would be necessary for us, our biological bodies, and our consciousness to settle into the viscous atmospheres of giant planets, because in fact, it is a trifle.
The main thing is that the incredibly beautiful process of creation of everything in the universe is happening literally before our eyes. Modern telescopes are able to see the birth and death of stars in other galaxies, the formation of protoplanetary disks, and the planets themselves in stars relatively close to us. We were surprised to discover and record mergers of black holes and neutron stars at the farthest reaches of the Metagalaxy. But we look at it distantly, as if we have nothing to do with it, as if we are strangers in this vast World.
But this is the World we were born into. Once upon a time, matter — in some way not fully understood by us—managed to become so complicated that it turned into living and even intelligent beings. Everything we are made of was once just hydrogen and helium. As you can see, there wasn't much variety. And this matter is considered an unreasonable substance. But it did that — it became intelligent, it gained a variety of forms, and the ability to act more rationally and intentionally — without waiting for everything to happen by itself for probabilistic reasons — in millions or even billions of years.
And now we are standing at the cosmic threshold, doubting that this World will accept us. But it gave birth to us. Or rather, we are it, but in a more perfect and meaningful version — one that can take over the initiative from Chaos, from Entropy, from the laws of Physics, finally. And to continue building this World according to the laws of Art — decorating space like a limitless canvas and using the most unimaginable colors for it.
At the current stage of development, we are timidly moving beyond low orbit and only plan to create habitable laboratory stations on the nearest celestial bodies — on the Moon and Mars. And even they don't seem hospitable to us, because over the past half century we have grown so fond of comfort and pampered ourselves. But this is a temporary setback.
Billions of years of evolution of cosmic matter cannot be in vain. And we'll certainly become aware of our role in this World — it is exceptionally creative. We are very necessary for the cosmos to do everything that is inaccessible to the evolution of unintelligent, uninspired plasma and cosmic dust. We are simply doomed to create the most complex structures that did not exist in this World before us and could not have arisen by the will of Chaos.
Do not be discouraged by the realization that there are not too many planets suitable for life in the visible part of the universe. Perhaps it is those beings who will turn out to be our evolutionary continuation who will have to create the best planets in the universe, life on which will be filled not with gloomy survival and struggle with the elements, but with happiness and creativity.
The tenth (and final) track from the album «Deep Cosmos 2025», released at the end of October.
About a century ago, astronomers realized that the Universe isn't limited to the single Milky Way Galaxy — there are other stellar cities, and ours isn't the only one.
Most galaxies appear as giant spirals of hundreds of billions of stars. There are also stellar spheres where spiral structures (or any pronounced structure at all) are absent. The most astonishing galaxies are those that engage in gravitational interactions — their shapes are the most bizarre, but ultimately, they will all be either spiral or spheroidal (elliptical) galaxies, simply larger in size.
The time will come when we will discover that, at the level of a higher geometric dimension, the «Macrocosm» contains an equally vast number of Universes, each different in nature and structure, which sometimes also interact with each other according to principles completely unknown to us.
But the story about this clearly goes beyond the description of the concept of the music album «Deep Cosmos 2025».
The full concept for the music album «Deep Cosmos 2025» is described on our website at this link:
The ninth track from the album «Deep Cosmos 2025», released at the end of October.
The concept of an expanding Universe has been the most popular over the past century, but it need not be the only one. Moreover, this behavior of the Universe can change many times over the course of its lifetime. If the Universe is currently expanding, this does not mean that it will continue to expand forever or throughout its entire life.
Even within its "expanding" phase, some regions of the Universe — such as galaxy clusters and superclusters — can exhibit the opposite dynamics, and indeed do so successfully. And if we imagine that as a result of prolonged expansion, the current Universe loses physical coherence in the future, then for some subuniverses that branch off from it, contraction will become the main dynamical part of evolution.
But who knows? Perhaps the Universe invented Life, and subsequently intelligent life, precisely to regulate this process and from a certain point on alternate between expansion and contraction?
The full concept for the music album «Deep Cosmos 2025» is described on our website at this link:
The eighth track from the album «Deep Cosmos 2025», released at the end of October.
The idea that Humanity (or any other civilization) could explore even the closest interstellar space to its star may seem completely unrealistic. After all, distances are great, travel speeds are limited, and the lifespan of even the most intelligent beings is short.
It's worth remembering at this point in our discussion that just 300 years ago, people had no idea what force drives celestial bodies in their orbits. Only recently have people discovered that this force — Gravity — is not the only force influencing the motion of stars and galaxies. Besides light pressure, there is also so-called "Dark Energy", which successfully counteracts Gravity and allows the Universe to expand, even accelerating. The nature of this Force is still completely unclear to us.
And this is only the very beginning of our understanding of the Universe. We're still only guessing at what the Global Geometry of the Universe might be, and in how many dimensions it manifests itself (it's not limited to three dimensions, at the very least).
And what will we learn tomorrow? Perhaps that interstellar travel doesn't require the chemical rockets we're accustomed to?
The full concept for the music album «Deep Cosmos 2025» is described on our website at this link:
You can listen to the album in its entirety there and even purchase it digitally for your own collection of electronic cosmic music.
Astrophotography in this video:
This video features the best astrophotography taken by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and the European Space Agency (ESA) using exoatmospheric telescopes. The astrophotography was published on the "World and Science" page on the X social network.
The seventh track from the album «Deep Cosmos 2025», released at the end of October.
Perhaps one day we will discover all the passages of this labyrinth, and the dead ends the Universe encountered in its search for a path of development beyond purely material constructs and the interaction of matter in a purely physical format. Abandoned planets, cities destroyed by time, civilizations that failed to transition from a primitive mode of survival for the sake of survival to exponential spiritual growth. We will also find those who succeeded, but unpredictable cataclysms put an end to it. Perhaps we can even resurrect some of these endeavors.
But our own path is not yet predetermined and is multifaceted. To a large extent, it depends on ourselves, but we are still far from realizing this. The other part-the will of the Universe-is incomprehensible to us. The nature of this will and the criteria by which the Universe decides which civilizations to admit to a new level of the future and which to roll back until certain worldview changes are corrected. And we can only hope that we will pass this selection.
This hope is reinforced by the fact that the Music of our future continues to come to Earth, which means the Universe believes in us.
The full concept for the music album «Deep Cosmos 2025» is described on our website at this link:
The sixth track from the album «Deep Cosmos 2025», released at the end of October.
Let's imagine that somehow, magically, Life was able to originate on one of the planets in this harsh World, permeated with harsh radiation and regularly shaken by cataclysms. In such conditions, Life fights for itself-for survival. Over 99% of its activity is devoted to this struggle, leaving no time, energy, or motivation for anything else. The surrounding World is alien and dangerous to it, even though it was the very World that gave birth to it.
What could the Universe offer to counter this terrifying cruelty?
Beauty!
All living things are drawn to light, but they are also drawn to beauty. And in our human perception, the most beautiful things we have ever seen are associated with the Celestial Element. All our deepest prayers and dreams are directed precisely to it-to heavenly beauty. This is no coincidence. And one can assume that if somewhere in this vast World there still exist inhabited planets where Life has reached a rational stage, then their highest standard of beauty will also be that beauty that descends from the Heavens.
That is precisely why all Life will strive toward the source of this Beauty, to touch it and become a part of it.
The full concept for the music album «Deep Cosmos 2025» is described on our website at this link:
The fifth track from the album «Deep Cosmos 2025», released at the end of October.
The Universe pays a huge tax on the production of the heavy elements of the Periodic Table. To obtain even a small amount, it is necessary to sacrifice the majority of matter for perpetual use somewhere beyond the Black Hole Event Horizon.
Elements such as Plumbum, Argentum, Aurum, Platinum, and Hydrargyrum are not created in the cores of stars - there is insufficient energy to synthesize them even there. A very small relative amount of these substances is formed in supernova explosions-specifically, during the collision of density waves, which causes some
portion of the dying star to disperse into the surrounding space. We see this as the remnant nebula characteristic of supernova explosions. It is in such nebulae that the widest range of chemical elements is found-the elements necessary for the formation of life-supporting planets and their ecosystems. Our Earth was assembled from fragments of a dead star after a supernova explosion.
But even more heavy elements are formed during the merger of neutron stars. Such an event can be allegorically called the second derivative of a supernova explosion.
However, most of the matter will disappear forever into the darkness of the Black Hole, leaving us with only less than 1% of rare, but extremely valuable chemical elements.
The full concept for the music album «Deep Cosmos 2025» is described on our website at this links:
The fourth track from the album «Deep Cosmos 2025», released at the end of October.
We often ask: "Is there life in the Universe - anywhere besides our planet?"
The question is legitimate, but also premature
Life likely flared up and died down repeatedly on numerous planets before settling on some one. In earlier eras, its origin was hampered by a lack of diversity in chemical elements, as atomic nuclei heavier than iron do not synthesize in the depths of ordinary stars. Then, abundant supernova explosions added to the problem, burning away potentially life-friendly spaces for tens and hundreds of light-years around them. Galaxies were still small, compact, and cramped for life - biological life. But stellar life erupted like a relentless geyser. This laid the foundation for more favorable conditions for biological life in the next era. We are living in precisely this favorable time.
Who knows, maybe we belong to the early civilizations, and before us there was no one... or almost no one. But this time is fleeting. It will be followed by an era of cooling of the Universe and the loss of physical connectivity of its parts.
We must hurry
The full concept for the music album «Deep Cosmos 2025» is described on our website at this link:
The third track from the album «Deep Cosmos 2025», released on October 24th.
How is living matter fundamentally different from nonliving matter?
Nonliving matter strictly follows the Laws of Physics. Nonliving matter tries to defy them. Perhaps this doesn't always succeed, but at a minimum, it strives to do exactly the opposite. Where gravity pulls us downward, toward the center of gravity, living matter tries to rise, to fly. Where oxidizing substances strive to combine with metals and turn them into crumbling rust, living microorganisms and plants restore the metals, separating them from the oxidizing agents, thereby filling the atmospheres of their planets with oxygen. Where nonliving structures inevitably deteriorate over time, ensuring the growth of entropy, life strives to heal the wounds and restore what was destroyed, resisting Time itself.
If not for life, the days of the Universe would be numbered. Its fuel reserves - though vast compared to our human understanding of raw materials and resources - are burning out very quickly in the depths of stars. The third generation of stars, to which our Sun belongs, is already burning out. Each generation lasts, on average, 5 billion years a huge amount of time for humans. But for the Universe, this is like five years of a human life. The fourth generation of stars will not have much hydrogen left. And many galaxies have already lost it.
Only Life can save the Universe from complete burnout. It will reverse many processes, slow down some, and find new ways to free matter from the captivity of Black Holes.
One hopes that Life still has that precious Time that will allow it to evolve and acquire the Power and creative abilities to fulfill its Mission.
The full concept of this album is described on its pages:
The second track from the album «Deep Cosmos 2025», released on October 24th.
The album's main idea is that it took billions of years for inanimate, mindless matter to create the simplest, yet fundamental, structures of our world. Perhaps the first stars and galaxies appeared fairly quickly, but that's where things reached a dead end - simply because the Universe had nothing else besides hydrogen and helium (in very small quantities). And you can't build rocky planets from hydrogen alone. And you certainly can't create something that could influence the evolutionary path of the Universe beyond all the laws of physics — life and intelligence.
The full concept of this album is described on its pages:
Friends, this is the first video episode of the «Deep Cosmos 2025» album which was released back in October, and the next album was released in November. Now it's time to share the video. So, I'm sharing it.
A few words about the theme of the album «Deep Cosmos 2025»
We are created by the Universe, like everything else in it. We are not guests here. We are at home. But for now, we are "children." As they sang in a some song from the 70-ths: "We are the children of the Galaxy". In fact, we are the children of this Universe. And the Universe has far-reaching plans for us.
Right before our eyes, the Universe continues to create itself creating new stars, new galaxies within itself. For now, we are simply observing this. But at some point, when we mature and strengthen a little, we will have to join this amazing process of creation. We-
representatives of intelligent matter will become the main builders of this vast World.
The full concept of this album is described on its pages:
Everything has a beginning. From the starting point, it's sometimes impossible to see where the path will lead. And the path itself doesn't exist yet.
This series of musical albums began on January 25, 2009. That day, my musical colleague, Igor Kolesnikov, and I gathered for tea in the studio, intending to record another improvisational session. We only managed to produce one track (at other tea parties, we'd record a dozen). I was pondering, "What should I do with this?" It was then that the title «Deep Cosmos» came to mind. The recording of our tuning miraculously yielded material for another, very short track, and I recorded another track immediately after Igor's departure. But three tracks still wasn't enough.
I intended to continue, but I couldn't find the same momentum. It wasn't until the New Year holidays of 2015 that I holed up in the studio for a few days with just one very modest synthesizer — a Korg R3 (3-octave keyboard, 8-voice polyphony, no score memory) — and, putting notes together, I suddenly recorded three more tracks. I added them to those that had been waiting in the wings since 2009. And so the album «Deep Cosmos» emerged — the very first one. I seemed to have calmed down.
But five years later, a second album literally leaped out of me. I had to call it «Deep Cosmos 2020». And I thought it might be a good tradition to release another «Deep Cosmos» every five years. And so it was decided to record «Deep Cosmos 2025» in 2025.
I've tried this several times this year, but it just didn't work out — some kind of inspiration from above was needed. And I simply waited for it, simultaneously creating music for other album projects. During this time, two compositions were born, which I even initially called «Deep Cosmos 2025 I» and «Deep Cosmos 2025 II». I even performed one of them at a concert on October 4th. But they weren't included on the album «Deep Cosmos 2025».
The completely uncompromising — intense and rapid — work on the album «Deep Cosmos 2025» began precisely in October, immediately after the concert. Those were sleepless nights and days that merged together, when I literally fell out of reality and created somewhere beyond it, returning only to record the notes. The album came together very quickly — you already listened to it on October 24th.
I exhaled. There was a reason to worry — what if the third «Deep Cosmos» album didn't come together in 2025? But it did. Now I don't have to think about «Deep Cosmos» until 2030…
But I wasn't allowed to relax for long. I intended to accompany the album with a few videos — for YouTube and other platforms. But I didn't even get around to editing one — the second wave arrived.
I was perfectly aware of the same channel, the same stream. And I dove into it. Again, days and nights in distant violet-ultramarine musical spaces. The result — another full-length album — almost 80 minutes long. Admittedly, the two tracks I rejected back in August fit in perfectly — they weren't suitable for the third album in the series, but they fit perfectly into the fourth, giving it a wonderful ending.
That's the story of its creation…
I'm regularly asked, "How is music born?" Each time it's a little different, and most importantly, unpredictable. I'm no longer surprised by this, though. But perhaps this story will shed some light on something for someone.
The album «Deep Cosmos 2026», released a few days ago, is now available for listening. If you're interested, follow the link to Bandcamp and listen:
Album «Deep Cosmos 2026» • Composer Andrey Klimkovsky
Hey friends, Time seems to be moving at warp speed — my album «Deep Cosmos 2026» just dropped in 2025, like it couldn’t wait another year! Truth is, there was never really a schedule. This one feels like a pure gift from the universe: inspiration hit hard, and the next chapter of this cosmic journey suddenly came together on its own.I’m beyond excited to share my new studio album with you. To me, it feels like a transdimensional leap — thousands of light-years ahead of the last one.
Stream / listen / dive in here: https://klimkovsky.bandcamp.com/album/deep-cosmos-2026
Thank you for being part of this endless cosmic ride with me ☽
Album «Deep Cosmos 2025» • Composer Andrey Klimkovsky
Friends, my new album is out
«Deep Cosmos 2025»
In case anyone doesn't know, this is a continuation of some spontaneous series. This album has two eponymous predecessors, but with a reference to 2015 and 2020. Now I have a good tradition of diving deeper and deeper into the abyss of space every five years. But I always come back with new music.
This series is distinguished by its non-entertaining sound—closer to an academic electronic style. There's not a lot of drums, but more sound experiments and contemplative moods. I'm increasingly liking this kind of electronica myself. But this album is definitely not boring at all. Even before it was fully completed, I began using the music from the new album as a creative stimulant—everything I created with it turned out excellent — article texts, illustrations, web page code (though this is nothing new—many people use my music specifically as a creative accelerator), and it's even suitable for jogging.
The album features 10 diverse tracks, totaling over an hour in length. The tracks play continuously, without pauses (as is typical in classical electronic music). Buyers can download «Deep Cosmos 2025» in the highest quality (FLAC, but a standard MP3 is also included), split into individual tracks, and as a continuous version. As is traditional, the music is accompanied by a colorful, multi-page PDF booklet with descriptions in both English and Russian.
The «Deep Cosmos» series developed from the first album as a conceptual work. The first album described the life of cosmic matter in a distant era — before Humans, and even before the emergence of biological life. The second album told the story of the pioneers of interstellar routes. Now, I have managed to touch on the theme of unity of purpose — Humanity, as the inevitable evolution of the Universe, and the primordial matter that, through trial and error over billions of years, evolved into us — precisely so that we can continue its work of transforming the Universe, but in a conscious and balanced manner.
I understand that we are still very far from this.
But this music brings us closer to understanding the meaning of our appearance in this incredibly beautiful Universe.
