For nearly a century before there was such a thing as a space program,a view of space was possible.People could see full views of the Moon,explore Mars ,and study the outer space beauty.All of this was made possible by a small group of artist-astronomers  who worked to show people how other worlds in space might look. Lucien Rudaux,a French artist,was the first to use his artistic ability and his knowledge of astronomy in art.His paintings show a mixture of skilled observations,brilliant imagination and careful attention.As a result,many of his works have come surprisingly close to actual conditions on distant planets.His painting of Mars included moonlike craters  that were first photographed by the astronauts in 1965.His 1930 painting of a dust storm looks remarkably like a photograph of a storm taken by the astronauts in 1976. The artist-astronomers,including Rudaux,made people interested in outer space by painting what turned out to be exact portraits of the planets. According to the passage,artist-astronomers spent their lives   _  .
exploring the planets studying paintings painting the planets producing spaceships