Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

I have a soft spot for conceptual space art — trying to capture what this probe or that lander will see, when it gets there. Since we can’t tag along with every robotic explorer, it’s up to the artist to imagine what we’d see. What a wonderful occupation! In this case, we’re shadowing the Stardust probe:

On Jan. 2, 2004 NASA’s Stardust spacecraft made a close flyby of comet Wild 2 (pronounced “Vilt-2″). Among the equipment the spacecraft carried on board was a navigation camera.that Comet Wild 2 is about 3.1 miles in diameter.

This artist’s concept depicts a view of Wild 2 that shows the faint jets emanating from the comet.

Labyrinth, copyright Tsuneo Sanda

As I frequently apologize for mention, I try not to overwhelm this blog with my fandom of choice, but some things are too beautiful to let them pass me by. (Via DBSW.)

This ring of dark matter is not new-news from Hubble, but it caught my eye as I was scrolling through the mighty folder of space images this morning. Dark perhaps, but a nice shade of blue!

May 15, 2007: Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have discovered a ghostly ring of dark matter that formed long ago during a titanic collision between two massive galaxy clusters. The ring’s discovery is among the strongest evidence yet that dark matter exists. Astronomers have long suspected the existence of the invisible substance as the source of additional gravity that holds together galaxy clusters. Such clusters would fly apart if they relied only on the gravity from their visible stars. Although astronomers don’t know what dark matter is made of, they hypothesize that it is a type of elementary particle that pervades the universe.

This Hubble composite image shows the ring of dark matter in the galaxy cluster Cl 0024+17. The ring-like structure is evident in the blue map of the cluster’s dark matter distribution. The map was derived from Hubble observations of how the gravity of the cluster Cl 0024+17 distorts the light of more distant galaxies, an optical illusion called gravitational lensing. Although astronomers cannot see dark matter, they can infer its existence by mapping the distorted shapes of the background galaxies. The map is superimposed on a Hubble Advanced Camera for Surveys image of the cluster taken in November 2004.

Been a while since I poked around Etsy — this time I found fantastic earrings. I love the patina, especially.

Handcrafted in sterling silver, these little moons will be great for everyday, casual wear. They were first cut from sterling silver sheet, then hand stamped, formed, and treated with a patina to highlight the detail. The patina has been sealed with lacquer to protect the finish.

The Meteor of 1860 by Frederic Church. Courtesy: Judith Filenbaum Hernstadt (painting photographed by Gerald L. Carr)

Yesterday’s APOD featured a painting and poem that documented a fireball event in 1860. The Meteor of 1860 by Frederic Church is a beautiful work of art, and dovetails nicely with this snippet of Walt Whitman’s Year of Meteors:

…the strange huge meteor procession, dazzling and clear, shooting over our heads,
(A moment, a moment long, it sail’d its balls of unearthly light over our heads,
Then departed, dropt in the night, and was gone;)

Here’s the story of how these two works were connected to the cosmic phenomenon, and eachother:

Frederic Church (1826-1900), American landscape painter of the Hudson River School, painted what he saw in nature. And on July 20th, 1860, he saw a spectacular string of fireball meteors cross the Catskill evening sky, an extremely rare Earth-grazing meteor procession. From New York City, poet Walt Whitman (1819-1892) also wrote of the “… strange huge meteor procession, dazzling and clear, shooting over our heads” in his poem Year of Meteors (1859-60). But the inspiration for Whitman’s words was forgotten. His astronomical reference became a mystery, the subject of scholarly debate until Texas State University physicists Donald Olson and Russell Doescher, English professor Marilynn Olson, and Honors Program student Ava Pope, located reports documenting the date and timing of the spectacular meteor procession. The breakthrough was spotting the connection with Church’s relatively little-known painting. Fittingly, the forensic astronomy team’s work was just published, on the 150th anniversary of the cosmic event that inspired both poet and painter.

Star pendant I bought at Uniko Jewelry, Portland Saturday Market, June 2010

I’ve been wanting to make this post for about a month. I bought this beautiful fused glass star pendant at the Portland Saturday Market in Portland, Oregon. It’s a mind-bogglingly huge array of artisans and craftsmen, so much so that I was hard-pressed to pick something to spend my money on… until I saw Uniko Jewelry’s fused glass pendants. (I have a thing for glass.) The hearts were gorgeous, but naturally what caught my eye were the STARS, each one a bit different, all of them fantastic. Mine is teal (or purple, depending on angle/lighting) with a dash of red and black. I absolutely adore it. It’s nearly an inch wide, a bit more than a quarter-inch thick, and it comes with a very nice silver chain.

Image copyright Uniko Jewelry/Stephen Poon, used with permission.

I asked the owner/artist Stephen Poon for permission to post some of his art here (and for larger pictures), which he kindly provided! There are several stars for sale on his website, and they’re all beautiful as far as I’m concerned. Please go buy one (or two or three!)

Image copyright Uniko Jewelry/Stephen Poon, used with permission.

It was a challenge to find a neat photo to use today, one that I hadn’t used last year on the “big” anniversary. 41 years ago today, man first set foot on the lunar surface. As Pars3c pointed out, it’s good to remember this stuff more often than just the “fives” and “tens”.

It’s hard to know how to feel on this anniversary. A year ago, NASA was still going to the Moon (in a human way.) The public was watching WeChooseTheMoon.org as it counted down the milestones of Apollo 11 in real-time. On a very microscopic level, in the grand scheme of things, I was still figuring out this blog and had not yet rebranded and moved to a fabulous new domain. Also, my theme dictated that my pictures be smaller than they are now. (Hooray for bigger pictures!)

Now, it seems to me that all of NASA is up in the air, seemingly doomed by a statement from the current NASA administrator that we can’t leave LEO without international help. Really? We can’t? If you say so…. At this moment, people are gathered at a conference, presenting the myriad of reasons why the Moon is a great place to go — a fascinating collection of mysteries begging for human hands to explore them. Yet, by our current president’s statement, “we’ve already been there.” Really? It’s over, just like that? Well, if you say so….

And so I find myself hunkering down in the past, the way I’ve always been. I was asked this weekend to contribute to a podcast — and sadly I couldn’t — about how Apollo affected me personally. It’s a hard question. I was born in 1978, so I missed the whole thing by a matter of years. Still, I had the space bug from a very young age, and although I was a child of the Space Shuttle, the moon landings particularly fascinated me. Apollo made me want to become an astronaut, and although things didn’t go that way, it still has a profound effect on me. I dreamed, and still do dream, of the Moon. I’ll probably always be stuck in the past, between Apollo and the Shuttle. Certainly I see no reason to stick my head out into the future. At the moment, NASA gives me no hope at all. Perhaps commercial endeavors will, in time. We’ll see.

Credit & Copyright: Piotrek Sadowski, astrofotografia.com.pl

Eh, yeah, this is today’s APOD and I try not to do that, but it’s awfully pretty for a Friday, don’t you think?

Dark shapes with bright edges winging their way through dusty NGC 6188 are tens of light-years long. The emission nebula is found near the edge of an otherwise dark large molecular cloud in the southern constellation Ara, about 4,000 light-years away. Formed in that region only a few million years ago, the massive young stars of the embedded Ara OB1 association sculpt the fantastic shapes and power the nebular glow with stellar winds and intense ultraviolet radiation. The recent star formation itself was likely triggered by winds and supernova explosions, from previous generations of massive stars, that swept up and compressed the molecular gas. A false-color Hubble palette was used to create this sharp close-up image and shows emission from sulfur, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms in red, green, and blue hues. At the estimated distance of NGC 6188, the picture spans about 200 light-years.

Today’s post comes from the This Is Just Plain Cool Dept: the Common Extensible Cryogenic Engine (CECE) during a hot-fire test. Rocket engines are amazing to behold (preferably, from a safe distance) — consider this a MOAR POWER gift from me to you, this Thursday.

Spacecraft attempting to land on an unfamiliar surface need to perform a maneuver called “deep throttling” — a step that allows the vehicle to precisely throttle down to perform a smooth, controlled landing. NASA and industry partners have demonstrated this type of engine control capability to help design a more reliable and robust descent engine that could be used to land space exploration vehicles on the moon, an asteroid or another planet.

The Common Extensible Cryogenic Engine, also known as CECE, recently completed the fourth and final series of hot-fire tests on a 15,000-pound thrust class cryogenic technology demonstrator rocket engine, increasing the throttling capability by 35 percent over previous tests. This test series demonstrated this engine could go from a thrust range of 104 percent power down to 5.9 percent. This equates to an unprecedented 17.6:1 deep-throttling capability, which means this cryogenic engine can quickly throttle up and down.

Picture: Franco Brambilla / Rex Features

This odd image is by Franco Brambilla, combining science fiction and vintage postcards.

The aliens have landed, and they’ve sent back postcards from their journeys around Europe. That’s if you believe the work of Franco Brambilla, an artist who loves to add a sci-fi angle to old postcards he finds.

A weird one for your Wednesday. There’s many more at the above link!