beauty

Star Trails

Astronaut Don Petit is back on Earth now, but while he was on the ISS, he took thousands of incredible pictures and videos from orbit, and many of them are only now being catalogued and shared. Visit his X feed regularly to see a constant stream of beautiful images.

In his words: “High resolution star trail from the SpaceX Crew 9 Dragon, marked by a fleet of flashing Starlink satellites, glowing atmosphere, soon to rise sun, and arcing stars. Captured over the Pacific Ocean with Nikon Z9, Sigma 14mm f1.4 lens, effective 24 minute exposure compiled from individual 30 second frames, f1.4, ISO 1600.”

Source

Even More Scenic Summer Fun

Last year, we were finishing the house and getting ready to move and moving, and we missed a lot of the summer. This year, we are making up for lost time!

Last weekend, we went to see Mumford & Sons at The Gorge Amphitheatre in George, WA. 2 hours west of Spokane, 2.5 hours east of Seattle, it's in the middle of absolute nowhere - that happens to be on a ridge above the beautiful Columbia River.

The comparison to Red Rocks Park (in Colorado) is immediate and deserved. Is it a better or worse venue than Red Rocks? Oh, why judge! The important thing is, I used to get to go to concerts at Red Rocks, and now I get to go to concerts at The Gorge!

It bills itself as having the most beautiful sunsets of any concert venue in the world, and THAT may well be true, for the sunset was indeed breathtaking (the clouds cleared enough in time to be an accent rather than a hindrance).

Oh, right, the concert itself. Incredible. Easily Top 5 of shows I've seen, and I've seen *a lot* of shows. 9 band members, with a full horn section, an upright bass, and of course the omnipresent fiddle, and their sound was as crisp, clear and in sync as a studio recording. In person, they sounded better than their released live albums.

But let's be honest. While the show would've been a shadow of itself without the ensemble, Marcus Mumford is the indisputable star. He has a strongly charismatic stage presence that I wasn't expecting, and a perfect voice.

10/10, would recommend.*

*Except the exfiltration system. It was a disaster. Never build a venue that can hold 30,000 people at the end of a 3-mile 2-lane road.

Sunshine

Ace astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy captured a banger of a photo of the ISS against the sun recently (see it here). Now he’s released an incredible bonus shot from the session. This is one hell of an optical illusion!

Source

P.S.: The title of this post is a reference to a quirky but excellent 2007 movie, “Sunshine,” about a team of astronauts sent on a mission to reignite the dying Sun with a nuclear fission bomb.

Two Worlds, One Sun

This stunning visual was created by NASA, the Curiosity rover, and photographer Damia Bouic.

The Sun appears slightly smaller from Mars than from Earth, since Mars is 50% further from the Sun than Earth. More striking, perhaps, is that the Martian sunset is noticeably bluer near the Sun than the typically orange colors near the setting Sun from Earth. The reason for the blue hues from Mars is not fully understood, but thought to be related to forward scattering properties of Martian dust.

The terrestrial sunset was taken in 2012 March from Marseille, France, while the Martian sunset was captured in 2015 by NASA's robotic Curiosity rover from Gale crater on Mars.

The Evolution of Midjourney

Midjourney certainly has come a long way in 2.5 years! The first image is a render I did this week - my first one attempting two characters in the same image. The second image is the very first Midjourney render of Alex (back in Aug 2022).

The main feature that isn't there yet is the ability to really fine-tune images once they've been created. MJ and several of the other image generators do have editing capabilities now, but they tend to alter the overall image as they edit, and the quality degrades.

I need to be able to tell it, "now lighten her skin tone a bit, as she should be kind of pale." Then "fix the gadget on his wrist and remove the object that's in front of her forearm." Then maybe "lessen the muscles in his arms just a lttle; he's not a gym rat. ;)"

But, you know, damn.

A Mars Mood

I am obsessed with this grainy image snapped by Percy on Mars. It’s quiet and contemplative, haunting and lonely, yet stirring to life the string that tugs at your soul and whispers of your connection to a vast cosmos.

From the Perseverance X account: “That bright "star" is actually Mars' moon Deimos. In the hours before dawn, I snapped this long-exposure image with my left Navcam and caught Deimos as well as two stars from the constellation Leo in the sky. It's definitely a mood, as they say.”

Original post here.

Happy 35th Birthday to Hubble

I feel so grateful to have grown up during the Hubble Era. I might not be the lover of space I am (or even a scifi writer)* if not for the inspiration Hubble's images provided over the years.

*Okay, I'd probably be both no matter what. But the images have still been amazing!

And on that note, to celebrate the 35th anniversary of Hubble’s launch, NASA has released 4 stunning new images. You can read more about Hubble’s mission and the new images here: https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/nasa-celebrates-hubbles-35th-year-in-orbit/

Cosmic Tornado

Wow. Now THIS is the kind of imagery I am here for. Look at that crispness and clarity! And the galaxies in the background.... On behalf of amateur space aficionados everywhere, I declare that JWST was worth the time, trouble and money it took to build and deploy.

“NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope captured this beautiful juxtaposition of the nearby protostellar outflow known as Herbig-Haro 49/50 with a perfectly positioned, more distant spiral galaxy. Due to the close proximity of this Herbig-Haro object to the Earth, this new composite infrared image of the outflow from a young star allows researchers to examine details on small spatial scales like never before.

Herbig-Haro objects are outflows produced by jets launched from a nearby, forming star. The outflows, which can extend for light-years, plow into a denser region of material. This creates shock waves, heating the material to higher temperatures. The material then cools by emitting light at visible and infrared wavelengths.”

I have words on the moon!

It's a historic day for private space exploration. Early Sunday morning, Firefly Space's Blue Ghost stuck the landing, making it the first fully successful private, commercial moon landing!

On a tiny nanofiche onboard Blue Ghost reside two of my short stories, "Apogee" and "Solatium," as part of the Lunar Codex. All the thanks to Samuel Peralta for making so many writers' and artists' dream come true.

Blue Ghost is ALSO carrying a bucketload of science. Instruments will investigate the structure and composition of the moon’s mantle, the heat flow at different depths beneath the lunar surface, the interaction of solar wind and Earth’s magnetic field, and the impact of solar radiation on the lunar surface.

The lander also carries the Lunar PlanetVac, which is designed to collect regolith from the lunar surface that could be returned to Earth as part of a separate mission, and the Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment, which will test the ability to use GPS signals at lunar distances.

Blue Ghost will operate for about 14 Earth days on the lunar surface. On March 14, Firefly expects to capture high-definition imagery of a total eclipse when the Earth blocks the sun above the moon’s horizon. How amazing is that going to be?

The Horizon of Earth

This might be the most beautiful photograph ever taken from the ISS. Snapped by astronaut Don Petit this weekend, it features the Milky Way, Zodical light, Starlink satellites as streaks, stars as pin points, the atmosphere on edge showing OH emission as burned umber, the soon to rise sun, and cities at night as streaks - all in one image.

Source: https://x.com/astro_Pettit/status/1878900589238923290

Ice Clouds Over a Red Planet

From NASA / Astronomy Picture of the Day:

“If you could stand on Mars -- what might you see? You might look out over a vast orange landscape covered with rocks under a dusty orange sky, with a blue-tinted Sun over the horizon, and odd-shaped water clouds hovering high overhead. This was just the view captured last March by NASA's rolling explorer, Perseverance. The orange coloring is caused by rusted iron in the Martian dirt, some of which is small enough to be swept up by winds into the atmosphere. The blue tint near the rising Sun is caused by blue light being preferentially scattered out from the Sun by the floating dust. The light-colored clouds on the right are likely composed of water-ice and appear high in the Martian atmosphere. The shapes of some of these clouds are unusual for Earth and remain a topic of research.”

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap241203.html

Thedas

I’ve taken a momentary detour from Amaranthe to Thedas - I’m playing Dragon Age: The Veilguard. I don’t spend nearly as much time playing video games as I used to; writing is a full-time job, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. But I’ll always play a Bioware game (admittedly, Baldur’s Gate 3 got me this year, too - it was incredible, in all the best Bioware-style ways).

Anyway, Veilguard is an absolutely gorgeous game!