[podcast] The Art of Space, Part 2

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This is the second part of our interview with space artist, Ron Miller. He’s an author, illustrator, former art director for the National Air & Space Museum’s Albert Einstein planetarium, and his work is truly inspirational! Here is Part 1 of our interview where we talk about how he got into the digital medium, his philosophy on space art, and how he researches his pieces. In Part 2, we talk more about exoplanets, and look at and discuss specific pieces of his art.

Below you’ll find the art we discuss in the podcast.

These pieces have very realistically rendered nebulae which we thought resembled real Hubble data.

“Rogue Planet” Image Courtesy of Ron Miller

This one is an artist’s impression of planets orbiting a pulsar. The first exoplanet system discovered was one around a pulsar. Dr. Aleksander Wolszczan from Penn State was one of the scientists who made this discovery. He was an astronomy professor of both Eric Mamajek (whose own exoplanet discovery we discuss in this podcast) and Blueshift’s Maggie Masetti, not long after his discovery.

Image Courtesy of Ron Miller

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[Blueshift ponders...] What’s one misconception in astronomy that drives you crazy?

Blueshift has covered the bad science in movies. In today’s “Blueshift Ponders,” we asked several of our colleagues:

What’s one misconception in astronomy drives you crazy?

Here are are their answers! What are yours? Tell us yours either in the comments, or on Facebook or Twitter!

Korey Haynes: The “dark” side of the moon misnomer. It’s just the far side! But I think the misleading terms people use contribute to why it’s so hard for most people to understand how the moon moves with respect to us and the sun. Maybe we need to launch a campaign to make Gary Larson more famous than Pink Floyd?

The far side of the moon, Credit: Apollo 16 Crew, NASA

Brian Williams: The misconception that drives me crazy is how people view scientists in general from a societal standpoint. The “stereotypical” scientists are socially awkward geeks (usually male) who could easily be picked out of a crowd of “normal” people. Television shows and movies don’t do anything to help here, with shows like The Big Bang Theory (which I do generally like, but still) reinforcing these stereotypes to the extreme (4 nerdy scientists who hang out with a pretty blonde girl). As funny as shows like this are, the fallacy being promoted is that you can be cool or you can be smart, but you can’t be both. In truth, we’re just like everyone else, and some of us are actually pretty cool people. :)

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[podcast] The Art of Space, Part 1

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Transcript (Text, PDF)

Blueshift recently interviewed space artist Ron Miller. Not only is he an amazingly talented illustrator, but he’s also the author, consultant, and former art director for the National Air & Space Museum’s Albert Einstein planetarium. He’s written and illustrated many books, one of which, “Out of the Cradle,” is a classic and a huge inspiration to our generation.

We recently came across his art illustrating a news article about an unusual exoplanet system which might actually have a ring system like Saturn’s. This led us to Ron and resulted in a two part podcast all about his extraordinary work. This is part 1. You’ll find examples of Ron’s art below.

Artist impression of Kepler 47c.
Image Courtesy of Ron Miller

Artist impression of the birth of KOI 55-01 and KOI 55-02.
Image Courtesy of Ron Miller

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[podcast] Studying Simulated Stardust

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Dust – on Earth, it’s a nuisance. But in space, it’s a valuable natural resource, a raw material essential to the formation of nearly any object imaginable. NASA Postdoctoral Fellow Dr. Christina Richey studies interstellar dust grains through laboratory-created analogs, comparing the properties of simulated stardust to data from missions like SOFIA, Spitzer, and Herschel. This hands-on approach gives Christina and other researchers unique insight into the building blocks of stars, planets, and even life. This research complements observational data, computer simulations, and other studies of how objects form and work in space. In this interview, Blueshift spoke to Christina about her research as well as her adventures outside the lab, looking for life in exceptionally hostile environments.

Credit: Christina Richey

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[Maggie's blog] Come Together

If you’re at all a fan of astronomy, you’ve probably marveled over the many beautiful photos of spiral galaxies that are out there. Like this one of NGC 3344 captured by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

But you may not know that galaxies have not always looked this way. The grand spirals we are so familiar with were formed over the course of billions of years by the collisions of smaller galaxies. Though, when spirals collide with a similar-sized galaxy, the disruption can cause them to merge and evolve into a giant elliptical galaxy. According to an article in Nature News, based on a survey of galaxy shape and structure (current to 2009), it is thought that “nearly all massive galaxies have undergone at least one major merger since the Universe was 6 billion years old.”

Giant elliptical galaxy, M87, located in the Virgo cluster

When we look at very distant galaxies, we see a completely different picture. Older galaxies tend to be small and clumpy, often with a lot of star formation occurring in the massive clumps. The question of how these clumpy galaxies evolve and develop structure over time is a big open question in astronomy, and we hope that the powerful up-and-coming James Webb Space Telescope will help astronomers to learn more.

Clumpy galaxy spied by the Hubble

Clumpy galaxies spied by the Hubble

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[Maggie's blog] Comet Watch

If you’re an astronomy buff, you might know that Comet Pan-STARRS has been gracing our early evening skies over the last few weeks. I was pretty excited about this because when I was in college, we had two spectacularly bright comets appear – Hayakutake and Hale-Bopp – a year apart.

Pan-STARRS definitely wasn’t the same experience for me as those two bright comets were. Though Pan-STARRS did apparently get bright enough to be naked-eye visible, you had to be at a dark location. It was also a tricky comet to view, because it was at its nearest approach to the Sun, which put it close to the Sun in the sky. This also meant that the comet was very low on the horizon, and it wasn’t visible for terribly long after sunset. It was a balancing act of waiting for the comet to be dark enough to view, without it being too low in the sky. Another disadvantage we had was that Washington, DC is directly to the west of our house, so the lights of the city tend to wash out that part of the sky. Without a known dark-sky site within a reasonable distance, my husband and I tried to be backyard astronomers instead.

We tried twice without binoculars with no luck. Then we ordered a pair, and the timing worked in our favor. We were clouded out for a few days, but by the time the binoculars arrived, it had cleared up. One more try from the backyard failed, and then we got the idea of going up onto the roof of our house. Almost immediately the comet was spotted… just before it set behind the trees.

We managed to catch it on a second night – and I am glad I saw it. But I’m still hoping that Comet C/2012 S1 (ISON), due in November, will be even brighter and as spectacular as the comets of my youth.

I did attempt to see if an iPhone could register Pan-STARRS through binoculars. The answer? Yes. But it looks like a single bright pixel:

Credit: Maggie Masetti

In contrast, here are *cough* scans of film pictures I took of Hayakutake (top) and Hale-Bopp (bottom) – Hayakutake was particularly stunning, and in a dark sky, its tail seemed to span the whole sky.

Credit: Maggie Masetti

Credit: Maggie Masetti

Though my pic of Pan-STARRS was unspectacular, there have been some really lovely photos of it. Some of my friends volunteered their own, and others I’ve seen online.

Here’s one taken by my friend Craig Markwardt from NASA Goddard:

Credit: Craig Markwardt

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[Sara's blog] Awww! Cosmic baby pictures!

Protostars in Messier 78, as seen by multiple observatories
Credit: NASA/ESA/ESO/JPL-Caltech/Max-Planck

The side-by-side images above depict protostars found in Messier 78, a reflection nebula found within the constellation Orion (but not the Orion Nebula, which is Messier 42). These are some of the youngest stars that astronomers have ever seen – some of them are still embedded deeply in a gaseous envelope, which would suggest that they’re under 25,000 years old. That may seem like a long time compared to our human lives… but for stars that can live for millions or billions of years, it’s still stellar infancy. These images accompanied this press release from the Herschel space observatory, and represent observations from Herschel as well as ground-based telescopes. Though they can be difficult to detect, researchers are hoping to document more young stars in various stages of life – from before birth through infancy – to learn more about the early development of stars.

NASA often looks at “young” astronomical objects, to learn more about the formation and evolution of the Universe. Here’s a selection of some beautiful and interesting cosmic baby pictures…
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[Koji's blog] A Victorian Scandal

A recent event reminded me of a scandal of a sort that happened around 1850. At the center of it was John Russell Hind, a British astronomer (I mentioned him in a previous blog about archives).

Hind was a superb observer who knew the sky very well. He discovered many interesting objects outside the solar system, but his main passion was the discovery of asteroids. He ended up discovering 10 of the first 30 asteroids known, which is quite a feat considering how hot this field was at the time. As the discoverer, he got to name these asteroids. At the time, asteroid names were picked from mythology – such as Ceres, Pallas, Juno, and Vesta, the names of the first 4 asteroids known.

Hind named the first two asteroids he discovered (nos. 7 and 8 overall) Iris and Flora. These sound more like old-fashioned women’s names to me, but they certainly are names from classical mythology, and so they passed without comments. Hind then picked the name “Victoria” for one of his later discoveries.

There was a reaction to this choice: “we are not amused” would be one way to put it. “You can’t name an asteroid after *your* queen,” would be another. Hind claimed, however, that he took the name from Roman mythology, in which Victoria is the goddess of victory. It was pure coincidence, according to him, that his sovereign, the Queen of the British Empire, was also called Victoria.

This composite image shows the comparative sizes of eight asteroids. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/JAXA/ESA

Fast forward 160 years or so. Recently, there was an internet poll to pick the names of a couple of small moons of Pluto. The clear winner: Vulcan. Some people said “you can’t name a moon of Pluto after a Star Trek planet.” (Sounds familiar?) Others countered
“but Vulcan is the god of fire in Roman mythology.” (Sounds familiar?) Some things never change, or so it seems, including the name of the asteroid no. 12 – still called Victoria, despite the initial objections.

So, the Star Trek connection probably will not disqualify the proposed name, Vulcan. Still, I’m not a big fan of this pick – wouldn’t you rather name a much hotter world after the god of fire, like one of the “hot Jupiters”?

Right now, exoplanets have relatively boring names – designated with lower case “b”, “c” etc. after the name of the parent star. Things could get very interesting, if astronomers ever decide to give them proper names.

Pluto and its moons, as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope, Credit: NASA, ESA, and L. Frattare (STScI)

[Maggie's blog] JWST @ SXSW, part 3

Sorry for the delay with part 3 of my coverage of the James Webb Space Telescope at South by Southwest – things were super busy on Sunday – it was a long day starting with a NASA Social and ending with a Guinness World Record – and then it was time to head home and collapse for a while!

But I’m starting to feel recovered from the long weekend, so here goes part 3.

Credit: Alex Evers

I’m actually going to back up a bit to Saturday night – a big storm was spotted on the radar and the whole NASA tent sprung into action. Everything was taken down and stowed to try to protect it from water and winds.

It turned out to be good that we had because there definitely had been water in the tent during the storm. The next morning was extra busy as a NASA Social was coming through at 9am, and everything had to be put back up before the tent opened for the day’s visitors.

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[Maggie's blog] JWST @ SXSW, part 2

Despite posting my blog pretty late last night, there are still a few things I want to share with you from Friday at South by Southwest. The NASA tent was busy til 10:30 PM last night – and would have been still going til midnight if the weather had cooperated for the star party. We had lots of speakers and the full-scale model was lit up in a pretty amazing light show.

Pamela Gay made a gorgeous time-lapse of sunset, the Austin skyline, and the light show from the full-scale model:

My personal favorite image from the event is this one our NASA photographer Chris Gunn got at night. If you’re at SXSW do go up the hill behind the NASA tent to see the full-scale model and the skyline from this vantage point!

Credit: Chris Gunn

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