Click to listen! (12MB MP3, right-click to save)
Transcript (Text, PDF)

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

The following two images were inspired by the potential exoplanet system discovered by Eric Mamajek, which just might have a Saturn-like ring system!

Image Courtesy of Ron Miller

Image Courtesy of Ron Miller

More about Ron Miller :

• Ron’s website
• Ron’s space art catalog

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. :)

Koji Mukai: “Astronomy is the science of images” (or something along these lines), when spectroscopy is significantly more important as a source of scientific progress.

Maggie Masetti: People not understanding the vast distances in space. I don’t think people get how far away or how long it would take just to travel to the closest star to us. Even traveling at the speed of light it would take us over 4 years to get to Proxima Centauri. At the speed the Voyager spacecraft is moving, it would take over 73,000 years! Space is very, very big. (I tried to illustrate distances in space with this little Cosmic Distance Scale feature.)

Sara Mitchell: The idea that we need to go out into space to explore it. We’ve learned nearly everything that we know about the Universe from light that we collect, not by going out and directly measuring or sampling things. Sure, it’s nice to send a probe or a rover (or, very rarely, people), but that’s only reasonable for nearby objects (and still quite tricky). The Hubble Space Telescope creates amazingly detailed images of objects far, far away… as it orbits just a couple hundred miles above the Earth! It doesn’t have to go anywhere to capture those images, it just orbits Earth and patiently collects enough light to give us these details.

As it happens, our Nobel Laureate, Dr. John Mather (whom we’ve interviewed a few times) answered this question during the Reddit AMA that he did. Here is his answer:

John Mather: I think people have a really hard time grasping how empty outer space is, in the sense of immense distances between objects, and immense time spent going from one to another. There’s a lot of talk about space aliens as though it were physically possible for them to get here from somewhere else, and (sorry to say this) talk about human travel out of the solar system. We just don’t live long enough to do that.

It’s your turn! Comment below or drop us a line on Twitter or Facebook and tell us what misconceptions drive you crazy!

Click to listen! (10MB MP3, right-click to save)
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

Artist impression of HD 188753Ab 2.
Image Courtesy of Ron Miller

Artist impression of HD 189733b 2.
Image Courtesy of Ron Miller

Artist impression of Kepler 10b.
Image Courtesy of Ron Miller

Artist impression of NN Serpens c and d.
Image Courtesy of Ron Miller

Artist impression of Upsilon Andromeda b.
Image Courtesy of Ron Miller

Artist impression of 55 Cancri E.
Image Courtesy of Ron Miller

More about Ron Miller :

• Ron’s website
• Ron’s space art catalog

Click to listen! (10MB MP3, right-click to save)
Transcript (Text, PDF)

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

Christina recently accepted a new position with NASA’s Planetary Science Division and will no longer be blogging for us about her adventures, but you can read her previous guest blogs:

• Celebrating Science and Engineering in Washington, DC
• 7 Degrees of NuSTAR…
• The Life of a Scientist: Traveling to ACM 2012, Niigata, Japan
• The Life of a Scientist: Astrobiology in Iceland, Parts I and II
• The Life of a Scientist: Astrobiology in Iceland, Parts III and IV

For more on interstellar dust:

• What is interstellar dust? Cool Cosmos has some basic information.
• This isn’t the first podcast we’ve made about dust! Listen to Dust in the Interstellar Wind, an interview with Goddard astrophysicist John Debes about dusty disks and planetary formation.
• The SOFIA mission just captured amazingly detailed infrared images of a massive star forming in a nursery of interstellar gas and dust SOFIA is also responsible for data which helps laboratory scientists formulate interstellar dust analogs.

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

Other unanswered questions about galaxies include the following. How did the first galaxies form? How did we end up with the large variety of galaxies we see today? (We see not only organized and structured spiral galaxies in the modern universe, we also see giant ellipticals, and galaxies in a wide variety of shapes and sizes.) We now know that extremely large black holes live at the centers of most galaxies – but what is the nature of the relationship between the black holes and the galaxy that hosts them? There is also more to understand about the mechanisms that cause star formation whether it happens internal to a galaxy or because of a merger.

One thing we do know is that galaxies are still forming and assembling today. There are many, many examples of galaxies colliding and merging to form new galaxies. And in our own local neighborhood of space, the Andromeda galaxy is headed toward the Milky Way for a possible future collision – many billions of years from now!

Here’s an example of a galaxy (named IRAS 23436+5257) thought to be, because of its twisted, worm-like structure, the result of a collision and subsequent merger of two galaxies.

Credit: ESA/Hubble and NASA, Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt

There are thousands of amazing images of galaxy mergers out there. Here is a sampling.

Visible light Hubble data combined with infrared data from Spitzer, to create this stunning image of M51, the Whirlpool galaxy. M51, as you can see, is actually two interacting galaxies (formally NGC 5194 and 5195). Phil Plait has a good write-up on this image.

Credit: vdHoeven/NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Kennicutt (Univ. of Arizona)/DSS

Here is Hubble’s view of the merging galaxies known collectively as II Zw 096. This is multiwavelength, from the far-ultraviolet to the near-infrared.

Credit:NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI/H. Inami (SSC/Caltech)

“The Mice,” a pair of colliding galaxies, were given this name because of the long tails of stars and gas trailing each galaxy. They will someday be a single giant galaxy.

Hubble image, Credit: NASA, Holland Ford (JHU), the ACS Science Team and ESA

Interacting galaxies can create some unique and strange shapes, as seen in these Hubble images:

Image: NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage Team/STScI/AURA/A Evans/University of Virginia/NRAO/Stony Brook University/K Noll/J Westphal)

And if those weren’t enough for you, here are more! (Be sure to look at the larger image!)

Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration, A. Evans (University of Virginia, Charlottesville/NRAO/Stony Brook University), W. Keel (University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa), K. Noll, B. Whitmore and M. Stiavelli (STScI), G. Ostlin (Stockholm University), and J. Westphal (Caltech)

We’ll leave you with this video, done by Dr. Frank Summers, which shows a comparison of a simulation of a galaxy collision with five Hubble observations of galaxy collisions.

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

My friend Raphael Perrino got these from Falls Church:

Credit: Raphael Perrino

Credit: Raphael Perrino

This beautiful video shows Pan-STARRS setting over the Flatirons in Boulder:

This one shows it setting behind the Eiffel Tower! (And there’s a beautiful still of it here.)

(The same photographer has a gorgeous shot of the comet with the Moon.)

Norwegian photographer Tommy Eliasson captured these beautiful images of the comet, including this one showing the comet with the Northern Lights, this one at sunset, and this one with the Andromeda Galaxy.

If only I’d been able to see the comet in such exotic locals, rather than from a roof in suburban Maryland!

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…

Gas pillars in the Eagle Nebula, as seen by Hubble
Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, J. Hester and P. Scowen (Arizona State University)

This is one of Hubble’s most famous images, often called the “Pillars of Creation.” This image was captured by Hubble nearly 18 years ago, and it shows a portion of the Eagle Nebula, where stars are in various stages of formation and development within columns of cool interstellar hydrogen gas and dust. Inside these pillars are Evaporating Gaseous Globules, or EGGs, small globules of even denser gas that house embryonic stars. Eventually, stars emerge from their EGGs and the EGGs photoevaporate away.

Tiny, young galaxies brimming with star formation
Credit: NASA, ESA, and Z. Levay (STScI)

These images represent a sample of observations from the Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS), which used Hubble’s detectors to look for young dwarf galaxies. These dwarf galaxies, which are the most common type of galaxy in the Universe, are much smaller than our own Milky Way galaxy (about a hundred times smaller, on average). They produce stars at a furious rate, and can double their population a thousand times faster than our galaxy can. These galaxies formed about 9 billion years ago, but they’re so far away that we’re seeing them in their early years. Astronomers hope that understanding these galaxies will help us better understand the formation of the Universe’s earliest stars and galaxies.

An all-sky picture of the infant universe
Credit: NASA/WMAP Science Team

This final image isn’t a baby picture of an astronomical objects – it’s a baby picture of our Universe as a whole! This image was created from nine years of data collected by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), which observed microwave radiation released approximately 375,000 years after the birth of the Universe. The image looks back 13.77 billion years and reveals temperature fluctuations (shown as color differences) that correspond to the seeds that grew to become the galaxies. From these fluctuations, astronomers significantly expanded their understanding of the formation and fundamental structure of the Universe.

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)

]]> http://astrophysics.gsfc.nasa.gov/outreach/podcast/wordpress/index.php/2013/03/18/kojis-blog-a-victorian-scandal/feed/ 0 http://astrophysics.gsfc.nasa.gov/outreach/podcast/wordpress/index.php/2013/03/14/maggies-blog-jwst-sxsw-part-3/ http://astrophysics.gsfc.nasa.gov/outreach/podcast/wordpress/index.php/2013/03/14/maggies-blog-jwst-sxsw-part-3/#comments Thu, 14 Mar 2013 17:11:28 +0000 Maggie Masetti http://astrophysics.gsfc.nasa.gov/outreach/podcast/wordpress/?p=5212 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.

Sunday started with a ride to our tent with a Nobel Laureate (how cool is that?) and then I worked to get our display of Middle School JWST projects back up. I finished in time to join the NASA Social, already in progress.

In case you don’t now, a NASA Social is what used to be called a Tweet-up – it was broadened to include other social media than Twitter. So now fans of NASA that are on social media can apply to come to special events and then share what they see and hear. In this case, NASA Social attendees (about 30 people, including “Mohawk Guy” and one of the people behind the Mars Curiosity Twitter account) came to get a special tour of NASA at South by Southwest. Their day started at our JWST NASA Experience Tent where they got to ask questions of our Nobel Laureate, John Mather, guest blogger and JWST project scientist Amber Straughn, project scientist Jason Kalirai, and Northrop Grumman engineer Scott Willoughby. They also got to see the 30 foot Microsoft Viz wall in action (they got it put back together and working in time for the NASA Social) and the full-scale model.

Credit: Maggie Masetti

Credit: Chris Gunn

Bobak Ferdowsi, aka “Mohawk Guy” was at the Social – he worked on the Mars Curiosity mission and his hair made him internet famous:

Credit: Chris Gunn

Later in the day, there were more live Skype chats with NASA Goddard’s cleanroom – here is Mike McClare on one side:

Credit: Chris Gunn

And Mark Klappenberger on the other, along with the Engineering Test Unit primary mirror segment from JWST.

Credit: Nasreen Alkhateeb

There were lots of talks and demos all day long – including a keynote by John Mather. In the morning on the drive in, I’d mentioned Grumpy Cat (I’m a fan, plus she was actually at SXSW) – and had to explain what she was to John, as he’d never heard of her. And later on, in his keynote, John said, “We may not have a grumpy cat but we have to have a grumpy frame of mind to test, test, test and make sure deployments work.” I thought this was pretty fantastic.

The big evening event was a Guinness Book of World Records attempt at Largest Astronomy Lesson. We had a large crowd, but we didn’t know if we’d make the record – the previous record was 458. But we did! 526 people learned about light and color in three hands-on demonstrations using red and blue filters, and “spectral” glasses. It was pretty exciting and it put everyone in a good mood – we’d worked really hard all weekend on making JWST’s presence at this festival as amazing as it could be, and this was the icing on the cake.

Here the crowd gathers:

Credit: Alex Evers

Credit: Alex Evers

Amber Straughn talks to the crowd:

Credit: Mike McClare

The Guinness representative on stage:

Credit: Alex Evers

We did it!

Credit: Alex Evers

Credit: Alex Evers

After this all that was left was tweeting, blogging, and wrapping up the weekend!

Thanks for reading and we hope you enjoyed this look at our South by Southwest experience!

]]> http://astrophysics.gsfc.nasa.gov/outreach/podcast/wordpress/index.php/2013/03/14/maggies-blog-jwst-sxsw-part-3/feed/ 0 http://astrophysics.gsfc.nasa.gov/outreach/podcast/wordpress/index.php/2013/03/09/maggies-blog-jwst-sxsw-part-2/ http://astrophysics.gsfc.nasa.gov/outreach/podcast/wordpress/index.php/2013/03/09/maggies-blog-jwst-sxsw-part-2/#comments Sun, 10 Mar 2013 02:44:00 +0000 Maggie Masetti http://astrophysics.gsfc.nasa.gov/outreach/podcast/wordpress/?p=5202 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

I took a few pictures from this vantage point myself, though they don’t live up to what Chris did!

Here’s a view of part of the NASA Experience Tent South by Southwest, especially the 30 foot Microsoft Visualization Wall, which is being use to show astronomical video and imagery, as well as tours of the WorldWide Telescope.

Credit: Chris Gunn

There’s also an infrared camera where you can learn about how infrared light (and astronomy) work. (You can read more about that in an entry I wrote for the Webb Signals blog.

Credit: Chris Gunn

Dan McCallister (education specialist at STScI), Sarah Hemenway, and Kelly Janes (teachers from Hutto Middle School), along with projects their middle school students did about the James Webb Space Telescope.

Credit: Frank Summers

Credit: Alex Evans

Some of our volunteers:

Credit: Alex Evans

Credit: Chris Gunn

Credit: Chris Gunn

Credit: Chris Gunn

Our own Nobel Laureate, John Mather spoke to a large crowd about JWST and also answered questions.

Credit: Chris Gunn

And lastly for today, here’s a student art project – JWST out of pasta!

Credit: Chris Gunn

]]> http://astrophysics.gsfc.nasa.gov/outreach/podcast/wordpress/index.php/2013/03/09/maggies-blog-jwst-sxsw-part-2/feed/ 0