La Guadalupana

I started to collect
images of the Virgin of Guadalupe
the weekend before
her most recent
feast day (Dec. 12)

ESA sent a TIE fighter G4 Cube to the Moon

Well, not really. But since the SMART-1 probe looks like a tricked-out Mac with an ion-drive engine and solar-panel wings, I couldn't help but make that assessment. I should point out that the spacecraft is probably 1000 times larger than Apple's cute little computer.



What actually surpised me about this is that I hadn't heard of this mission until a few hours ago. SMART-1 was launched in September 2003. It slowly wound its way around the Earth in ever-widening orbits for the next 13 months. SMART-1 began to orbit the Moon in November 2004.



"The main purpose of the SMART-1 mission is to flight-test the new solar-electric propulsion technology -– a kind of solar-powered thruster that is 10 times more efficient than the usual chemical systems employed when travelling in space. If all goes well, such a system could be providing the propulsion system for future ESA missions into deep space, such as BepiColombo.

"However, in the process, the mission will be providing some fascinating science. For example, SMART-1 will be mapping the lunar surface chemical composition more accurately than ever before. Apollo spacecraft carried hand-held cameras to photograph the lunar surface. SMART-1 will be leading the way in the latest imaging techniques. Images taken from many different angles and X-ray and infrared detection work will allow scientists to draw up new three-dimensional models of the Moon's surface.

"SMART-1 will be looking at the darker parts of the Moon's south pole for the first time. It will be mapping the so-called Peak of Eternal Light, a mountaintop that is permanently bathed in sunlight, while all around are dark craters never touched by the Sun. These craters are believed to harbour water-ice in the lunar soil. SMART-1 will also help scientists to confirm if ice is present at the lunar poles, where the temperature never rises above –170°C. Any water on the lunar surface would be very helpful in the creation of permanent bases on the Moon."

One more thing:

"Some viewers of SMART-1 pictures of the Moon's surface have reported problems in seeing the craters for what they are. They see reliefs and mountains where instead there should be depressions and valleys.



"Look at these two images. They are both the same, except one appears to have 'raised' features rather than craters. This is a common illusion, and can be explained by the fact that we humans have been used to light sources which generally come from above (the Sun mostly, in our case).

"When the light source comes from above, the pattern of illuminated and dark areas is predictable. For a crater in front of us, with light coming from behind, we see the rim nearest us 'in shade' and the rim farther away from us 'in the light.' For a mountain it is opposite: the mountain wall towards us is illuminated and the other mountain wall is in the shade.

"When you turn this pattern upside down (or rotate by 180 degrees), your eyes suddenly see a crater as a 'mountain' and vice versa. However, this effect is not exactly the same for all people, as our brains use experience to correct our perception."

Inversion and iteration

The cathedral in Reims, France, August 1999
(on the way to Vouziers to see an eclipse)



Detail of Stained Glass Eclipse,
an image rendered with Fractal Domains
(and seen at Fractalism)

Eclipse aspects

"Annular eclipses occur when the Moon appears smaller than the Sun. If you are in the path of annularity you will see the Moon begin to cover the Sun, eventually sliding in front of the Sun leaving a small circle of sunlight around the Moon’s disk for anything from a few seconds to up to 12 minutes. The Moon then slowly uncovers the Sun again.

"Because the sun is not completely covered during an annular eclipse, you must not look at it without a filter. The peak of a total solar eclipse is the only time you can look directly at the sun with no damage to your eyes. Total solar eclipses can last from a few seconds to a few minutes. The longest that a total solar eclipse can last is just over seven minutes."



"During a total eclipse of the Sun, the Moon appears bigger in the sky than the Sun. Therefore the bright rays of sunlight are blocked by the Moon, and we are able to see the Sun's much fainter corona, the ONLY time when this is visible.

The nature around you will change dramatically, as it gets quite dark. During a total eclipse of the Sun, the ONLY place to be is in the path of totality. Anywhere else and you will miss the show!

[Some folks would diagree with that, since a position on the edge of the totality path will provide a slighter longer opportunity to study the corona and filaments around the moon.]

Eclipse aspects, reviewed

The highlights of two eclipses
photographed by Fred Espenak

Volcanic growth spurts, just down the highway

Four months after Mount St. Helens stirred back to life -- drawing curiosity seekers from across the country -- the bulging, oblong dome inside the crater has ballooned to 350 feet high, with nearly a 50-degree slope in places.

The dome now contains enough solid material to fill KeyArena more than 100 times. At the peak of the flow, molten magma was being transformed into new rock pushing skyward at a rate of 11 yards per day.

Then earlier this month, an unexpected and significant explosion -- the biggest since October -- caught researchers by surprise and appears to mark some sort of transition on the sleeping giant's path to regrowth.

"'It makes me think a lot differently about the range of possibilities for the future,' geologist John Pallister said. 'We were anticipating a different event.'

"Volcanologists would not have been surprised if there had been a significant rockfall, a continuing hazard as sections of the new dome jut higher and stretch more than a thousand feet to the side. The explosive release of gas suggested that Mount St. Helens' plumbing is more finicky than first believed, that even slight changes in gas, or moisture below the surface, can trigger a new scenario.

"It's a reminder, said Jon Major, a research hydrologist at the Cascades Volcano Observatory, that "we've learned an awful lot about what we don't yet understand."

Escher (you've heard of him)

From one of the many pages
of images at mcescher.com

For all you Aquarians out there...

"Your need for independence should not be neglected, as it is essential that you develop and sustain the right lifestyle. In many ways you are a quiet, retiring person who prefers his or her privacy even though you have a reputation for being friendly, this is linked mainly to the fact that you always want to be helpful so anyone that needs it will be able to look to you. You will approach other peoples problems as you do your own, without emotion, logically and detached. As long as your views and privacy are respected, then you make a wonderful friend.

"Your positive traits are originality, idealism, plus you are independent and honest. The more often you allow yourself to express the positive side of your nature that is how often you will feel fulfilled and you will see your life as a wonderful adventure. You have the power to help people to overcome their problems and you are seen as a bright spot in many lives. When young, you are usually leaders of your generation, but you should try not to cling to youthful opinions and lose that forward-looking nature to ultra-conservatism. [Ronald Reagan was an Aquarian -Ed.] Awareness of the problem will go far to combat it.

"You rarely lose hope due to your positive and optimistic outlook on life, even when life gets difficult. Aquarius is an air sign and you must realize that aquarians need air, both physically and metaphorical. You must also realize just how stubborn you can be and should try to counter the tendency. You must not let your originality become too perverse as then others will be embarrassed or seriously annoyed. The Aquarian independence can also make themselves very remote from others thereby causing the Aquarian some emotional problems.

"Aquarians often find it hard to let anyone into their lives; close emotional relationships for Aquarians are much more difficult than for any other sign. They find it hard to settle into and sustain one due to their powerful need for independence. Closeness for them means modifying their lifestyle and tolerating an invasion of their privacy, both material and psychological but when and if they do allow this to happen,(they do have a strong romantic streak), they will be very committed and true. Aquarian originality and the need to be different shows up early in childhood."

Horsehead and Flame Nebulaeseen thru a Hydrogen-alpha filter

"The well-known Horsehead Nebula (Barnard 33) is the dark globule near the center of this image. It is obscuring the modestly bright, extended nebula IC 434, which extends south of the bright star Zeta Orionis (one of Orion's belt stars). Note that the Horsehead is just an extrusion of a large dark nebula covering about the left half of this image, and thus extincting the light of most of the stars from behind.



"Below the bright star Zeta Orionis is the bright and conspicuous emission nebula NGC 2024, also known as Flame Nebula, which is also a remarkable radio source (Orion B). All these nebulae are part of the large Orion cloud which is centered at the Great Orion Nebula, M42, and extends over several hundreds of light years and is about 1,600 light years remote.

"North is left. The camera was misaligned, so some aberrations are present in the corners."

All so matter-of-factly presented by Johannes Schedler from his Panther Observatory.

Galerie Sublimatio:Visionary Art by A. Andrew Gonzalez

Photos by Larry Sanborn

What is color?

"Out of the many vibrations reaching the earth a tiny octave is registered by the optic nerves. Our eyes respond to these particular vibrations with a reaction that we know as color.



"Medical science has proven that different colors have definite and various effects upon our nervous system and that they act quite independently of our eyes or minds.

"It has been suggested that the seven Colors correspond to the seven major planets and are radiating down to the earth at their specific rates of vibration. A red rose absorbs all colors except red, reflects the red light waves back to us, and we say, 'The rose is red.'

"The perfect blending of the seven color rays in the bright sunlight gives us a white light. If the rays are split up by being passed through a glass prism they are at once visible as colors. In the same way a rainbow is produced by the minute prismatic effects of rain in the sky.

"The color rays are pouring down on the earth night and day. Each object and every atom responds to them, thereby announcing its own quality to those who are able to decipher the language of colors.

"All matter emits vibrations. A human being also radiates subtle emanations of everything of which he is composed. A person with extra sensitive sight is able to see the colors of this rays at a certain angle and speaks of them as the person's aura."

See also:


Chakras and
appropriate
gemstones

Rolling thunder, replete with rhythm

"Two historic storms that devastated the New York/Long Island area were re-created first through data, then through sound. The resulting turbulent and evocative compositions allowed listeners to experience geographically scaled events on a human scale and gain a deeper understanding of some of the more unpredictable complex rhythms and melodies of nature...



"This interactive interface for Atmospherics/Weather Works allows you to select and listen to the sound of data describing the temperature, pressure, wind, and moisture of Hurricane Bob August 18, 1991 at various geographical points.

"Fourteen 5-minute compositions were created at five elevation points from sea level to the top of the atmosphere. The sound covers 1000km from Florida to Northern New York and from the eastern tip of Massachusetts to western New Jersey with New York City in the center. The model resolution was 10km, and data was taken every 3 minutes over 24 hours."

via Spitting Image

Plugging into the dreamscape

"AT first glance it looked like something in the window of a TriBeCa furniture store, an oversize lamp from the early 60's maybe. But when Kate Chapman flicked a switch and the three-foot high latticework cylinder in front of me began to spin, it was clear that we were dealing with more than just another piece of midcentury flotsam.

"The machine started to cast strobelike patterns of bright light on our faces, and when I closed my eyes as instructed, there they were, the dazzling multicolored forms that I'd been told about: mandalas and crosses and even Mandelbrot fractals, dancing across my eyelids.



"I was sitting on the floor of Ms. Chapman's Brooklyn loft, and she was demonstrating her prized household appliance, a 1996 Dreamachine originally made for William S. Burroughs. Besides the trippy visual effects the device is said to induce an 'alpha state' -- a state conducive to lucid dreaming or intense daydreaming -- in people who face the cylinder with their eyes closed as it spins around a bright light.

"Burroughs, along with other figures from the Beat Generation like Allen Ginsberg and Timothy Leary, was fascinated, even at times obsessed by the Dreamachine, which was invented in 1959 by their fellow Beats Brion Gysin, an artist, and Ian Sommerville, a math student at Cambridge. Mr. Leary called it "the most sophisticated neurophenomenological device ever designed"; Mr. Burroughs experimented with it for nearly four decades. (The film shows him using his Dreamachines at his home in Lawrence, Kan., shortly before his death in 1997).



"I had come to Ms. Chapman's loft to see if the machine lived up to the hype, but I didn't get very far in my first session. The colorful undulating patterns that I began to see almost at once were intriguing: far more vivid than the fuzzy images you see when you rub your eyes, although just as hard to focus on. But as far as I could tell my state of consciousness barely changed during the 20 minutes that I sat cross-legged in front of the spinning cylinder. When I opened my eyes, Ms. Chapman seemed to sense my disappointment.

"After the mixed success of my first experiment with the Dreamachine, my hostess urged me to try again. Ms. Chapman, 30, is a former neuroscience researcher for the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, a nonprofit organization that sponsors "scientific research designed to develop psychedelics and marijuana into F.D.A.-approved prescription medicines," according to its Web site.

"'I'm just an artist now,' she said.

"Ms. Chapman thought it might be helpful if my body were more relaxed, so I lay down on a sofa, and she put on soothing music. She flicked the machine back on as I shut my eyes. A moment later there they were, the same flashing patterns as before. After a while I became bored and my mind began to drift.

"That's when it happened. I didn't "see" as much as I strongly imagined a campfire in a clearing in a dense forest at night. My boyfriend Jim was sitting to my left, laughing. Later I seemed to find myself in a large empty auditorium, walking toward some chairs arranged in the middle of the room. In one creepy moment I was in a basement hallway, following closely behind someone walking ahead of me, whose face I couldn't see.

"I was imagining these scenes so vividly that it was almost as if I were seeing them. The thoughts had a kind of slow-motion jump-cut feel, just like dreams, but because I was fully conscious, I was able to contemplate all of this as it was happening.

"With my eyes still shut and my mind now very relaxed and slightly adrift, I started to notice that the wall of flashing patterns was receding backward and developing a dark border around its edges. It was at that moment that I sensed someone to my left, sitting beside me, watching what I was watching. This figure was not in the room with me, but in my head, which had now turned into a little theater. I felt that if I turned my head, I would be able to look over at this person.

"I opened my eyes, and reality rushed back in, to my relief. That last vision hadn't really been frightening, but it wasn't exactly heartwarming either. But I was impressed. As I talked to Ms. Chapman about my experience, I became aware of an unusual serenity and mental clarity, as if I had just waked from a refreshing nap.

"...Having lived through the experience, it was hard not to think about Mr. Gysin's vision of an alternate-universe America in which every home would tune into internal landscapes instead of commercial programming."

via Magpie

Pileus iridescence

"Bird watcher David LaPuma was in the Everglades National Park on July 17, 2003, when he glanced up and noticed 'the top of a cumulus cloud looking strange. Something up there was refracting sunlight and creating a kaleidoscope of color that was absolutely stunning!' LaPuma captured this picture and five others using a Nikon digital camera and a Leica Televid 77 APO spotting scope.

"Atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley explains what David saw: 'His pictures show iridescence in pileus clouds just above cumulus clouds. During the day, the warm moist air of a cumulus cloud rises. Sometimes the upward movement of the cumulus cloud pushes a layer of moist air above it upwards, too. This causes the air layer to expand and cool. Water vapor suddenly condenses forming a misty veil-like layer of water droplets above the cumulus. This is the pileus cloud. Any cloud formed suddenly like this has all its droplets of similar size, which is an absolutely ideal condition for iridescence.'"

via Spaceweather.com

A mis-scanned photo

This was a product of my sometimes-ornery HP film scanner three years ago.

Autumn mountain waterfall

via Chinese Paintings

Amateur astronomers get raw [image data]

"NASA and the European Space Agency usually process images from space missions using sophisticated computer software before being releasing them to the public. Changing the contrast, brightness, and even colouring the pictures can help to pick out key features that would otherwise go unnoticed.

"But with the Huygens mission, the scientists involved released the raw images as soon as they came in. Computer enthusiasts [that sounds worse than saying "geeks"] pounced on the images immediately, and improved them using a range of free or commercially available software before swapping their pictures in Internet chatrooms.

"'When we started looking at the raw images, there were marvellous things there that we wanted to share,' says Anthony Liekens, a chatroom enthusiast from Borsbeek, Belgium.

"When Liekens tuned into the ESA press conference on the morning of 15 January, he was disappointed by the quality of their images. So he decided to host amateur compositions on his website. The site has quickly turned into a virtual gallery.

"Many amateurs have also taken images from the two Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, and turned them into detailed topographic maps and panoramic landscapes. But this is the first time enthusiasts have beaten the space agencies to the punch, says Liekens, who admits he should really be finishing off his PhD in biomedical technology this week."

Gravity probe hit upside the head by solar flare

Gravity Probe B (I have to assume there was an A) is in orbit around Earth to detect the effects of a force called gravitomagnetism. What dat? Well:

"Gravitomagnetism is produced by stars and planets when they spin. 'It's similar in form to the magnetic field produced by a spinning ball of charge," explains physicist Clifford Will of Washington University (St. Louis). Replace charge with mass, and magnetism becomes gravitomagnetism.



"We don't feel gravitomagnetism as we go about our everyday lives on Earth, but according to Einstein's theory of General Relativity, it's real. When a planet (or a star or a black hole... or anything massive) spins, it pulls space and time around with it, an action known as 'frame dragging.' The fabric of spacetime twists like a vortex. Einstein [told] us that all gravitational forces correspond to a bending of spacetime; the "twist" is gravitomagnetism."

Anyhow, I only found out about GP B because of a blip about it on Spaceweather. Recent solar activity buffeted the satellite to the point where its star-tracking instrument temporarily lost its bearings. That situation's past, and I just wanted to post this composite of the sunspot group that produced the flare.

Lunar display

"Pictured above is a lunar corona, a fuzzy ring around the moon. Coronas are made of moonlight diffracted by tiny droplets of water in passing clouds. Photo credit: Daniel O'Malley of DeWitt, Michigan, Jan. 24, 2005."

Saturn seen by Cassini

This is a collection of images that came thru the raw image feed from Cassini.
They get bumped over time, so these are ones I wanted to be able to see again.

Northern lights in winter

See: Space Weather Now
for the current conditions
in the space environment.

This is the sun.

View it in all of its wavelengths.

Fluorescent luminescence

Sunsets from San Francisco [10.98] and Seattle [8.02]

More of the same (and lots that's different) at:
Fotos on Foot

Saturn's moons

Here is the rest of the Cassini probe's raw image output.

Alternative perpsectives

These are manipulations of an image that I included in a exhibition series a year and a half ago [Isis Majik]. I was... what was I doing... Oh, I was looking for something to enlarge with The Rasterbator, and I ended up using the light one in the middle.

An interactive global map of sea floor topographybased on satellite altimetry & ship-depth soundings

Batou Kannon by Aya Kato

So says JAANUS:

"The "Horse-headed" Kannon (Kwannon, Kwan Yin) in an angry, funnu, form. He is also considered to be the angry form of the Buddha Muryouju, one of the Six Kannon who saves those in the [Buddhist] realm of animals...

"He is distinguished by the white horse's head that he wears like a crown. The horse is one of the symbols of dominion of the 'ideal king,' Kyouryourinjin (or Kyouryoujouou; Sk: Chakravartin). There are many different forms of Batou having one to three faces and two to eight arms, and he holds different attributes in different images.

"Many stone statues, sekibutsu, of Batou were once set in place to protect travelers and their horses from injury on dangerous paths. It is also thought that Batou became conflated with a folk horse deity believed to be the vehicle of a deity who rides between this world and the sacred realm. Because of this identification, he became the protector of horses and the Buddhist counterpart, honjibutsu, of deities of common Komagata (lit. "Horse-shaped") shrines, which are found all over Japan."

Overexposure of the sixth planet