No, not the mountains I usually spend time in! For Thanksgiving, I traveled back to the southeast and spent the weekend at a cabin in the North Carolina mountains with family. If you’re in the US, I hope your Thanksgiving was lovely, your company festive and your taste buds entertained!
Starship Stacked For Flight
Starship gets stacked ahead of its second test flight on Saturday!
From SpaceX: “This is another chance to put Starship in a true flight environment, maximizing how much we learn. Rapid iterative development is essential as we work to build a fully reusable launch system capable of carrying satellites, payloads, crew, and cargo to a variety of orbits and Earth, lunar, and Martian landing sites.”
The Rhapsody of Space
See what I did there? ;)
From NASA: “For millennia, musicians have looked to the heavens for inspiration. Now a new collaboration is enabling actual data from NASA telescopes to be used as the basis for original music that can be played by humans.
Since 2020, the “sonification” project at NASA’s Chandra X-ray Center has translated the digital data taken by telescopes into notes and sounds. This process allows the listener to experience the data through the sense of hearing instead of seeing it as images, a more common way to present astronomical data.
A new phase of the sonification project takes the data into different territory. Working with composer Sophie Kastner, the team has developed versions of the data that can be played by musicians.”
Listen and learn more here.
Cassi Update
Cuteness overload: Cassi just went to the beauty shop for the first ever time! The groomer said she was a Very Good Girl (I don't believe them, lol, but at least everyone survived).
P.S.: the bow was out and trashed in seconds.
Spotify Audiobooks
Do you have a Spotify subscription? Well, as of today, you can use it to listen to audiobooks, including mine. Spotify Premium now comes with 15 hours a month of audiobook listening for no additional cost (you can also buy audiobooks a la carte). See all my audiobooks here: https://open.spotify.com/search/g.%20s.%20jennsen/audiobooks.
Noted: the Spotify interface for finding and browsing audiobooks is still really, really basic (you can't click an author or narrator name to see all their work, or sort by order in the series, for instance). It will improve, but until then, if you need a reminder, you can see my recommended reading/listening order here: https://www.gsjennsen.com/amaranthe-universe.
Does it seem like there's a lot of news about audiobooks lately? That's because there is! It's the hottest segment in the business, and the industry is undergoing rapid innovation (and a bit of turmoil). May you listen in interesting times.
Nostalgia Portal
Amen to this! I bought literally hundreds, if not a thousand or more, books at Waldenbooks from the ages of 5 to 17 (or rather my wonderfully indulgent and supportive parents did)! And when Waldenbooks didn't have what I wanted, I went downstairs to B. Dalton - because my local mall had BOTH OF THEM.
Those were truly the salad days...
“Heading to the mall today with my wife and many daughters.
I know they won’t be there, but I’d like to imagine that if I searched hard enough, I just might find a portal, or a secret door that leads to an area in the mall that has stores like this:”
Jupiter In Ultraviolet
This newly released image from the NASA Hubble Space Telescope shows the planet Jupiter in a color composite of ultraviolet wavelengths. Released in honor of Jupiter reaching opposition, which occurs when the planet and the Sun are in opposite sides of the sky, this view of the gas giant planet includes the iconic, massive storm called the “Great Red Spot.” Though the storm appears red to the human eye, in this ultraviolet image it appears darker because high altitude haze particles absorb light at these wavelengths. The reddish, wavy polar hazes are absorbing slightly less of this light due to differences in either particle size, composition, or altitude.
For more, go here: https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/hubble-provides-unique-ultraviolet-view-of-jupiter/
Webb's Stunning Infrared View of the Crab Nebula
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has gazed at the Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant located 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Taurus. Since the recording of this energetic event in 1054 CE by 11th-century astronomers, the Crab Nebula has continued to draw attention and additional study as scientists seek to understand the conditions, behavior, and after-effects of supernovae through thorough study of the Crab, a relatively nearby example.
Now exquisite, never-before-seen details help unravel the supernova remnant’s puzzling history. For more, go here: https://www.nasa.gov/missions/webb/the-crab-nebula-seen-in-new-light-by-nasas-webb/
JunoCam's Haunting View of Io
Juno just did a close fly-by of Jupiter’s moon Io (the most volcanically active world in the solar system), and here’s one of the first incredible images!
Raw image processed by Kevin M. Gill. Source
Webb's Spectacular View of M51
How incredibly lucky we are to have the Webb telescope in our lives, bringing us incredible images like this one! Damn, I love space.
What is it, besides breathtaking? M51, a nearby spiral galaxy (close enough to spot with binoculars if conditions are right), taken by Webb's Mid-Infrared Instrument.
See the article by the always great Phil Plait for all sorts of details on how the image was captured and what it actually shows us: https://badastronomy.substack.com/p/jwsts-view-of-the-magnificently-dusty
New Interview
Anyone want to take a deep-dive into my weird brain? I'm thrilled to have been interviewed by awesome fantasy author C. Borden on her blog. We talk about the Amaranthe universe, Medusa Falling, Marlee as a character, sci-fi inspirations, what being a lawyer taught me about writing, doing conventions as an introvert, and much, much more.
https://authorcborden.com/2023/10/06/author-spotlight-g-s-jennsen/
In Other News....
Cassi would like to wish everyone a good day! Whatever awaits you this week, she knows you've got this!
What's Under the Hood?
If you are curious about the nuts-and-bolts of how ChatGPT and other LLMs work, this is a great article. Long, but written in an accessible and understandable way. It's pretty fascinating.
Protostar
From Webb’s newest observation:
Herbig-Haro (HH) objects are luminous regions surrounding newborn stars, formed when stellar winds or jets of gas spewing from these newborn stars form shock waves colliding with nearby gas and dust at high speeds. This image of HH 211 from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope reveals an outflow from a Class 0 protostar, an infantile analog of our Sun when it was no more than a few tens of thousands of years old and with a mass only 8% of the present-day Sun (it will eventually grow into a star like the Sun).
The image showcases a series of bow shocks to the southeast (lower-left) and northwest (upper-right) as well as the narrow bipolar jet that powers them. Webb reveals this scene in unprecedented detail — roughly 5 to 10 times higher spatial resolution than any previous images of HH 211. The inner jet is seen to “wiggle” with mirror symmetry on either side of the central protostar. This is in agreement with observations on smaller scales and suggests that the protostar may in fact be an unresolved binary star.
Learn more: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2023/nasa-s-webb-snaps-supersonic-outflow-of-young-star
Starship
Just look at these photos!
From SpaceX on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1702774532174733387:
“Starship represents a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars, and beyond.”
Meet the Newest Member of the Jennsen Family
Dragon Con wasn't actually the most exciting thing I did last week. Meet Cassini Leeloo Jennsen, named after the Best Spacecraft and the Best Supreme Being. We'll call her "Cassi."
She's a 10-week-old Havanese, doesn't weigh half an ounce (okay, 4 lbs), and is utterly joyous and pure of spirit. Everything is new and interesting and worthy of nomming, and she has already thrown our life into total chaos. Cooper is * very * confused about this new intruder, but he's being so amazing with her; I predict they will be BFFs in no time.
Dragon Con Booth
Me at Dragon Con last week, doing Dragon Con things. All the thanks to Carole for the tremendous help setting up the booth, James Hunter and the guys at Shadow Alley Press for absolutely pwning a metric f*ckton of book boxes with brutal efficiency, Claire for holding down the fort like a pro when I had to act like a writer on panels, and of course Katie Cross for being a rockstar of a boothmate. It was a fantastic (and exhausting) four days of talking on panels, hanging out with author friends, and meeting so many awesome readers.
India on the Moon
The recent lunar curse is broken! India has successfully landed the Chandrayaan-3 probe on the moon's south pole, becoming the 1st country to land in that region and the 4th country to land on the moon.
More private enterprise landings are coming later this year.
Learn more about the mission here: https://www.space.com/india-chandrayaan-3-moon-mission-what-next
The Annotated Milky Way
This is the best annotation of the Milky Way map I've ever seen. You know, in case you get lost and need directions. All it’s missing are local restaurants and big box stores….
Found on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MAstronomers/status/1695062683236647198
Podcast Interview
I had a great time chatting with fellow sci-fi author JR Handley on the Blasters and Blades Podcast this week! We talked about taking SF worldbuilding to 11 (or 12...), cooking in space, spaceships, how weird alien species can get, what's next for Amaranthe, and so, so much more.
You can listen to the podcast at multiple places:
YouTube: https://youtu.be/5db7_8Di9Nw
BitChute: https://www.bitchute.com/video/5db7_8Di9Nw/
Rumble: https://rumble.com/v387i13-episode-278-gs-jennsen-starship-captain.html
