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#astroart

4 posts4 participants0 posts today
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"Before going to bed, we dedicate ourselves once again to the works of Judy W. Ross. Because in an anniversary year, all those involved and supporters should receive the recognition they deserve."

2003 October 17

Astronomy Quilt of the Week
* Credit & Copyright: Judy W. Ross, Point Roberts, WA

Explanation:
Demonstrating her mastery of a traditional astronomical imaging technique quilter and astronomy enthusiast Judy Ross has produced this spectacular composition of "Astronomy Quilt Piece of the Week". Her year-long effort resulted in an arrangement for a six by seven foot quilt consisting of 52 individual pieces (11 inches by 8 inches), one for each week, which she reports were inspired by her steady diet of APOD's daily offerings. Some of the pieces are based on actual pictures, such as the Hubble Space Telescope's view of planet forming AB Aurigae or Bill Keel's image of the nearby Pinwheel Galaxy. Others, with titles like the Blue Carpet Nebula and Duck Contemplates Black Hole, are from her own creative imaginings.

Replied in thread

"How about a little manual work for a change to really come down from the stress of the day? Let's be inspired by the quilting of Judy W. Ross and make ourselves comfortable with a cup of tea."

2004 November 25

What the Hubble Saw
* Credit & Copyright: Judy W. Ross, Point Roberts, WA

Explanation:
In this striking 41 inch by 38 inch quilt, astronomy enthusiast Judy Ross has interpreted some of the Hubble Space Telescope's best galactic and extragalactic vistas. Featured in past APODs, clockwise from the lower right are; the Red Rectangle Nebula, NGC 2392, the Sleeping Beauty Galaxy, V838 Monocerotis - the Milky Way's most mysterious star, and supernova remnant N49 - the cosmic debris from an exploded star. Of course, quilts have been used historically to represent astronomical concepts. And while inspired by the images of the cosmos that she incorporates into her quilts, Ross reports that she is still a little daunted by the intricacies of the Cat's Eye Nebula revealed by the Hubble's sharp vision.
quiltindex.org/

apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap041125.ht

Replied in thread

2015 December 24

Star Colors and Pinyon Pine
* Image Credit & Copyright: Stan Honda
stanhonda.com/

Explanation:
Beautiful, luminous decorations on this pinyon pine tree are actually bright stars in the constellation Scorpius and the faint glow of the central Milky Way. Captured in June from the north rim of the Grand Canyon of planet Earth, the shallow, close focus image has rendered pine needles on the tree branch sharp, but blurred the distant stars, their light smeared into remarkably colorful disks. Of course, temperature determines the color of a star. Most of the out-of-focus bright stars of Scorpius show a predominately blue hue, their surface temperatures much hotter than the Sun's. Cooler and larger than the Sun, and noticably redder on the scene, is giant star Antares at the heart of the scorpion. In focused, telescopic views the whitish disk at the upper right would be immediately recognizable though, reflecting the Sun's light as ringed gas giant Saturn.
apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110211.ht

apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap151224.ht

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2023 August 23 (*)

The Meteor and the Galaxy
* Credit & Copyright: Jose Pedrero
instagram.com/josepedrero.jpar

Explanation:
It came from outer space. It -- in this case a sand-sized bit of a comet nucleus -- was likely ejected many years ago from Sun-orbiting Comet Swift-Tuttle, but then continued to orbit the Sun alone. When the Earth crossed through this orbit, the piece of comet debris impacted the atmosphere of our fair planet and was seen as a meteor. This meteor deteriorated, causing gases to be emitted that glowed in colors emitted by its component elements. The featured image was taken last week(*) from Castilla La Mancha, Spain, during the peak night of the Perseids meteor shower. The picturesque meteor streak happened to appear in the only one of 50 frames that also included the Andromeda galaxy. Stars dot the frame, each much further away than the meteor. Compared to the stars, the Andromeda galaxy (M31) is, again, much further away.

apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap230823.ht

Replied in thread

@futurebird

"Thank you for accompanying me through space and time!
We are 100 now .. ok with me 101 that's worth a little celebration, isn't it? "

Comet Between Fireworks and Lightning
* Image Credit & Copyright: Antti Kemppainen

Explanation:
Sometimes the sky itself is the best show in town. In January 2007, people from Perth, Australia gathered on a local beach to watch a sky light up with delights near and far. Nearby, fireworks exploded as part of Australia Day celebrations. On the far right, lightning from a thunderstorm flashed in the distance. Near the image center, though, seen through clouds, was the most unusual sight of all: Comet McNaught. The photogenic comet was so bright that it even remained visible though the din of Earthly flashes. Comet McNaught has now returned to the outer Solar System and is now only visible with a large telescope. The featured image is actually a three photograph panorama digitally processed to reduce red reflections from the exploding firework.

apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap131110.ht

Replied in thread

2020 April 5

Color the Universe! 🎨
* Image Credit: Unknown

Explanation:
Wouldn't it be fun to color in the universe? If you think so, please accept this famous astronomical illustration as a preliminary substitute. You, your friends, your parents or children, can print it out or even color it digitally. While coloring, you might be interested to know that even though this illustration has appeared in numerous places over the past 100 years, the actual artist remains unknown. Furthermore, the work has no accepted name -- can you think of a good one? The illustration, first appearing in a book by Camille Flammarion in 1888, is used frequently to show that humanity's present concepts are susceptible to being supplanted by greater truths.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flammari
historyofinformation.com/detai
youtube.com/watch?v=6zp60ODhbb
gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6
books.google.com/books?id=ScDV
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camille_
apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap010101.ht

thecolor.com/Category/Coloring
huffpost.com/entry/coloring-fo

For Your Contribution:
asterisk.apod.com/discuss_apod

apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap200405.ht

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Eclipses in mythology and culture

from Contributors to Wikimedia projects

Eclipses of the Sun and of the Moon have been described by nearly every culture. In cultures without an astronomical explanation, eclipses were often attributed to supernatural causes or regarded as bad omens.
---
Religious and cultural practices

While solar and lunar eclipses are today understood astronomically as one celestial body shadowing another, their appearance from Earth does not intuitively belie a similar cause for each.
Mark Littmann, Fred Espenak, and Ken Willcox classified solar eclipse mythologies into four distinct genres:

+ A celestial being (usually a monster) attempts to destroy the Sun.
+ The Sun fights with its lover the Moon.
+ The Sun and Moon make love and discreetly hide themselves in darkness.
+ The Sun god grows angry, sad, sick, or neglectful.
---
Abrahamic religions

In the Talmud, solar eclipses are described as ill omens and several events in the Hebrew Bible are said to have occurred during eclipses. Judaism at large has been accepting of the modern astronomical explanation of eclipses and today many rabbis consider eclipses to be reminders of divinity and a time for prayer and introspection.
___
The periodicity of lunar eclipses been deduced by Neo-Babylonian astronomers in the sixth century BCE and the periodicity of solar eclipses was deduced in first century BCE by Greek astronomers, who developed the Antikythera mechanism and had understood the Sun, Moon, and Earth to be spherical celestial bodies since Aristotle. The astronomical understanding of eclipses was thus well understood in the Ancient Near East in which Christianity developed.
___
The New Testament describes the sky as darkening for hours during the crucifixion of Jesus. As the event's lengthy duration and occurrence on the day of a ...
Read more
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eclipses

Replied in thread

2020 June 15

A Ring of Fire Sunrise Solar Eclipse
* Video Credit: Colin Legg & Geoff Sims
facebook.com/ColinLeggPhotogra
facebook.com/BeyondBeneath
* Music: Peter Nanasi
peternanasi.com/about

Explanation:
What's rising above the horizon behind those clouds? It's the Sun. Most sunrises don't look like this, though, because most sunrises don't include the Moon. In the early morning of 2013 May 10, however, from Western Australia, the Moon was between the Earth and the rising Sun. At times, it would be hard for the uninformed to understand what was happening. In an annular eclipse, the Moon is too far from the Earth to block the entire Sun, and at most leaves a ring of fire where sunlight pours out around every edge of the Moon. The featured time-lapse video also recorded the eclipse through the high refraction of the Earth's atmosphere just above the horizon, making the unusual rising Sun and Moon appear also flattened. As the video continues on, the Sun continues to rise, and the Sun and Moon begin to separate. This weekend, a new annular solar eclipse will occur, visible from central Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, and a narrow band across Asia, with much of Earth's Eastern hemisphere being able to see a partial solar eclipse.

apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap200615.ht

** Note by grobi:
"To upload this video, I converted it and compressed it to a smaller file-size under #linux with the free software ffmpeg and the corresponding command:

'ffmpeg -i video_in.mkv -vcodec libx265 -crf 28 video_out.mp4'

Maybe you would like to post a corresponding video on a scientifically related topic, but it is perhaps too big? Then try ffmpeg."

Replied in thread

"Welcome back to the
Space Culture Club
(Feel free to contribute, rather as a reply than using the hashtag)
defcon.social/@grobi/114663418 "

2023 September 17

Moon Mountains Magnified during Ring of Fire Eclipse
* Credit & Copyright: Wang Letian (Eyes at Night)
luckwlt.com/About%20Me.html

Explanation:
What are those dark streaks in this composite image of a solar eclipse? They are reversed shadows of mountains at the edge of the Moon. The center image, captured from Xiamen, China, has the Moon's center directly in front of the Sun's center. The Moon, though, was too far from the Earth to completely block the entire Sun. Light that streamed around the edges of the Moon is called a ring of fire. Images at each end of the sequence show sunlight that streamed through lunar valleys. As the Moon moved further in front of the Sun, left to right, only the higher peaks on the Moon's perimeter could block sunlight. Therefore, thehttps://defcon.social/@grobi/114663418339078163 dark streaks are projected, distorted, reversed, and magnified shadows of mountains at the Moon's edge. Bright areas are called Baily's Beads. Only people in a narrow swath across Earth's Eastern Hemisphere were able to view this full annular solar eclipse in 2020. Next month, though, a narrow swath crossing both North and South America will be exposed to the next annular solar eclipse. And next April, a total solar eclipse will be visible across North America.

apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap230917.ht

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2025 July 1
A fisheye image of the sky is shown on the left with the landscape-foreground surrounding it. The plane of our Milky Way Galaxy runs down the center. At first glance the sky looks like oddly like an eye of a dragon.

Eye Sky a Dragon
* Image Credit & Copyright: Anton Komlev
instagram.com/komlev.av/

Explanation:
What do you see when you look into this sky? In the center, in the dark, do you see a night sky filled with stars? Do you see a sunset to the left? Clouds all around? Do you see the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy running down the middle? Do you see the ruins of an abandoned outpost on a hill? (The outpost is on Askold Island, Russia.) Do you see a photographer with a headlamp contemplating surreal surroundings? (The featured image is a panorama of 38 images taken last month and compiled into a Little Planet projection.) Do you see a rugged path lined with steps? Or do you see the eye of a dragon?
instagram.com/p/B1r5mYWIi9k/

Location:
youtube.com/watch?v=MBRMXR8y9N
rbth.com/arts/travel/2013/09/2
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia

DIY:
photographymad.com/pages/view/

For Your Desktop:
getwallpapers.com/collection/d

apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap250701.ht

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"Ahem, yes.. and no this is not First Mate Piggy's spacesuit and not Michael Jackson's costume for one of his most famous stage performances, even if this sculpture was called "Mooooonwalk", but read on for yourself..."

Suiting Up for the Moon
* Image Credit & Copyright: Robert Nemiroff (Michigan Tech. U.)
mtu.edu/physics/
mtu.edu/physics/department/fac

Explanation:
How will cows survive on the Moon? One of the most vexing questions asked about space, scientists have spent decades debating this key issue. Finally, after extensive computer modeling and over a dozen midnight milkings, engineers have designed, built, and now tested the new Lunar Grazing Module (LGM), a multi-purpose celestial bovine containment system. By now, many of you will not be surprised to be wished a Happy April Fool's Day from APOD. To the best of our knowledge, there are no current plans to launch cows into space. For one reason, cows tend to be large animals that don't launch easily or cheaply. As friendly as cows may be, head-to-head comparisons show that robotic rovers are usually more effective as scientific explorers. The featured image is of a thought-provoking work of art named "Mooooonwalk" which really is on display at a popular science museum.

+ Tech
ominous-valve.com/images/1954_
apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140627.ht

+ Science
science.nasa.gov/planetary-sci

+ Music
youtube.com/watch?v=lXKDu6cdXL

+ Culture
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Fo

+ Nature
wikihow.com/Milk-a-Cow

apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap150401.ht

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2021 July 10

Mercury and the Da Vinci Glow
* Image Credit & Copyright: Gabriel Funes

Explanation:
On July 8th early morning risers saw Mercury near an old Moon low on the eastern horizon. On that date bright planet, faint glow of lunar night side, and sunlit crescent were captured in this predawn skyscape from Tenerife's Teide National Park in the Canary Islands. Never far from the Sun in planet Earth's sky, the fleeting inner planet shines near its brightest in the morning twilight scene. Mercury lies just below the zeta star of the constellation Taurus, Zeta Tauri, near the tip of the celestial bull's horn. Of course the Moon's ashen glow is earthshine, earthlight reflected from the Moon's night side. A description of earthshine, in terms of sunlight reflected by Earth's oceans illuminating the Moon's dark surface, was written over 500 years ago by Leonardo da Vinci. Waiting for the coming dawn in the foreground are the Teide Observatory's sentinels of the Sun, also known as (large domes left to right) the THEMIS, VTT, and GREGOR solar telescopes.
earthsky.org/astronomy-essenti
earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD
science.nasa.gov/mercury/

science.nasa.gov/science-news/

iac.es/en/observatorios-de-can

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2024 September 14

The Moona Lisa
* Image Credit & Copyright: Gianni Sarcone and Marcella Giulia Pace
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gianni_A

Explanation:
Only natural colors of the Moon in planet Earth's sky appear in this creative visual presentation. Arranged as pixels in a framed image, the lunar disks were photographed at different times. Their varying hues are ultimately due to reflected sunlight affected by changing atmospheric conditions and the alignment geometry of Moon, Earth, and Sun. Here, the darkest lunar disks are the colors of earthshine. A description of earthshine, in terms of sunlight reflected by Earth's oceans illuminating the Moon's dark surface, was written over 500 years ago by Leonardo da Vinci. But stand farther back from your screen or just shift your gaze to the smaller versions of the image. You might also see one of da Vinci's most famous works of art.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gianni_A

artsandculture.google.com/asse

svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/5187/

apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240914.ht

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2019 October 23

Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh
* Painting Credit: Vincent van Gogh;
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_
* Digital Rendering: MoMA, Google Arts & Culture, via Wikipedia
moma.org/collection/works/7980

Explanation:
The painting Starry Night is one of the most famous icons of the night sky ever created. The scene was painted by Vincent van Gogh in southern France in 1889. The swirling style of Starry Night appears, to many, to make the night sky come alive. Although van Gogh frequently portrayed real settings in his paintings, art historians do not agree on precisely what stars and planets are being depicted in Starry Night. The style of Starry Night is post-impressionism, a popular painting style at the end of the nineteenth century. The original Starry Night painting hangs in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, New York, USA. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star

!>> sketchfab.com/3d-models/the-st
ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/gogh
vangoghletters.org/vg/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starry_N
andreaplanet.com/mosaic/starry
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Imp

moma.org/

apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap191023.ht

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2018 March 19

The Nebra Sky Disk
* Image Credit: Dbachmann, Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_tal
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fil

Explanation:
Some consider it the oldest known illustration of the night sky. But what, exactly, does it depict, and why was it made? The Nebra sky disk was found with a metal detector in 1999 by treasure hunters near Nebra, Germany, in the midst of several bronze-age weapons. The ancient artifact spans about 30 centimeters and has been associated with the Unetice culture that inhabited part of Europe around 1600 BC. Reconstructed, the dots are thought to represent stars, with the cluster representing the Pleiades, and the large circle and the crescent representing the Sun and Moon. The purpose of the disk remains unknown -- hypotheses including an astronomical clock, a work of art, and a religious symbol. Valued at about $11 million, some believe that the Nebra sky disk is only one of a pair, with the other disk still out there waiting to be discovered.

+ #History & Culture
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebra_sk
worldhistory.org/article/235/t
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebra_(U
science.org/content/article/sl
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9An%
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1600s_BC
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_A

apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap171107.ht

+ Constellation
apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap171114.ht
apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap160919.ht
apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap180318.ht

Continued thread

2021 January 12

A Historic Brazilian Constellation
* Image Credit & Copyright: Rodrigo Guerra
instagram.com/rodrigoguerra13/

Explanation:
The night sky is filled with stories. Cultures throughout history have projected some of their most enduring legends onto the stars above. Generations of people see these stellar constellations, hear the associated stories, and pass them down. Featured here is the perhaps unfamiliar constellation of the Old Man, long recognized by the Tupi peoples native to regions of South America now known as Brazil. The Old Man, in more modern vernacular, may be composed of the Hyades star cluster as his head and the belt of Orion as part of one leg. Tupi folklore relates that the other leg was cut off by his unhappy wife, causing it to end at the orange star now known as Betelgeuse. The Pleiades star cluster, on the far left, can be interpreted as a head feather. In the featured image, the hobbled Old Man is mirrored by a person posing in the foreground. Folklore of the night sky is important for many reasons, including that it records cultural heritage and documents the universality of human intelligence and imagination.

+ Culture
jstor.org/stable/43392390
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupi_peo

+ Constellation
apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap191206.ht
apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap161204.ht
apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap200101.ht
apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap190901.ht

apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap210112.ht

TOPIC>
Space Culture Club

"Welcome to Space's Culture Club! Make yourself comfortable and treat yourself to a good cup of tea in a pleasant atmosphere. We deal with space-related topics in terms of cultures, history, philosophy, art, literature and more in friendly company whether member or not!"

Human as Spaceship
* Space Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble, and J. Maiz- Apellániz (IAA);
iaa.es/
spacetelescope.org/
esa.int/
nasa.gov/
* Acknowledgement: D. De Martin;
* Human Image Copyright: Charis Tsevis;
tsevis.com/
* Composition: R. J. Nemiroff
mtu.edu/physics/department/fac

Explanation:
You are a spaceship soaring through the universe. So is your dog. We all carry with us trillions of microorganisms as we go through life. These multitudes of bacteria, fungi, and archaea have different DNA than you. Collectively called your microbiome, your shipmates outnumber your own cells. Your crew members form communities, help digest food, engage in battles against intruders, and sometimes commute on a liquid superhighway from one end of your body to the other. Much of what your microbiome does, however, remains unknown. You are the captain, but being nice to your crew may allow you to explore more of your local cosmos.

apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap190818.ht

NASA Webb Identifies Frozen Water in Young Star System
by NASA Webb Mission Team

Is frozen water scattered in systems around other stars? Astronomers have long expected it is, partially based on previous detections of its gaseous form, water vapor, and its presence in our own solar system.

Now there is definitive evidence: Researchers confirmed the presence of crystalline water ice in a dusty debris disk that orbits a Sun-like star 155 light-years away using detailed data known as spectra from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. (The term water ice specifies its makeup, since many other frozen molecules are also observed in space, such as carbon dioxide ice, or “dry ice.”) In 2008, data from NASA’s retired Spitzer Space Telescope hinted at the possibility of frozen water in this system.

“Webb unambiguously detected not just water ice, but crystalline water ice, which is also found in locations like Saturn’s rings and icy bodies in our solar system’s Kuiper Belt,” said Chen Xie, the lead author of the new paper and an assistant research scientist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

All the frozen water Webb detected is paired with fine dust particles throughout the disk — like itsy-bitsy “dirty snowballs.” The results published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

Astronomers have been waiting for this definitive data for decades. “When I was a graduate student 25 years ago, my advisor told me there should be ice in debris disks, but prior to Webb, we didn’t have instruments sensitive enough to make these observations,” said Christine Chen, a co-author and an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. “What’s most striking is that this data looks similar to the telescope’s other recent observations of Kuiper Belt objects in our own solar system.”
..

read more >>
science.nasa.gov/missions/webb

* Artwork Credits:
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Ralf Crawford (STScI)

Replied in thread

Teimareh Petroglyphs and Star Trails
* Image Credit & Copyright: Babak Tafreshi (TWAN)

Explanation:
Engraved in rock, these ancient petroglyphs are abundant in the Teimareh valley, located in the Zagros Mountains of central Iran. They likely tell a tale of hunters and animals found in the middle eastern valley 6,000 years ago or more, etched by artists in a prehistoric age. In the night sky above are star trails etched by the rotation of planet Earth during the long composite exposure made with a modern digital camera. On the left, the center of the star trail arcs is the North Celestial Pole (NCP), the extension of Earth's axis into space. Polaris, the North Star, leaves the bright, short, stubby trail closest to the NCP. But when these petroglyphs were carved, Polaris would have made a long arc through the night. Since the Earth's rotation axis precesses like a wobbling top, 6,000 years ago the NCP was near the border of the constellations Draco and Ursa Major, some 30 degrees from its current location in planet Earth's sky.

apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120712.ht