2017 Was One Of Our Planet’s Hottest Years On Record

Sarah Biffin (1784-1850): The Artist Who Painted With Her Mouth

Full entry here. Patreon here. Books here – yes, the second book is out!. 

And if you’re around HeroesCon in North Carolina this weekend, I’ll be there at Artist Alley table AA-1924! Come say hi! 

Art notes after the cut.

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my femme girlfriend: [hour and a half later] ok I’m ready to leave the house

me: [throwing on shorts and a tank top] okay baby i love you and you look so pretty

ok this is “earring magic ken” who was introduced in 1992 (and discontinued shortly thereafter)

basically mattel had done a survey and discovered that girls didn’t think ken was “cool” enough

SO someone had the bright idea to research coolness by sending people to raves which, at the time, were mostly hosted & attended by gay men. so they went to these raves and took notes on what the fashions were and finally landed on this outfit, mesh shirt & all 

this doll became the best selling ken doll in history, mostly because gay men bought it in droves. (many of them said his necklace was supposed to be a cockring) but mattel and a number of parents weren’t very amused and discontinued the doll 

“I VIOLATE ARTICLE 27, SEC. 553-4 OF THE MARYLAND ANNOTATED CODE SAFELY, OFTEN, AND EXTREMELY WELL,” Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, Washington, D.C., October 11, 1987. Photo © Exakta.

Sections 553 and 554 of Article 27 of the Maryland Code prohibited sodomy (punishable with a sentence of “not less than one year nor more than ten years”), oral sex, and “any other unnatural or perverted sexual practice with any other person.”

via @lgbt_history

The National Gallery Acquires Its First Painting by a Woman Since 1991

The London museum's acquisition of what is believed to be a rare Artemisia Gentileschi self-portrait demands a closer look at the world the artist inhabited in 17th-century Florence.

And the painter they chose was Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1653), whose first art show wasn’t held til 1991. Famously, she painted herself as Judith, beheading her rapist (as Holofernes). She also took her rapist to court and won - in the 1600s!

I cover her in book one. Here she is, painting her famous rendition of Judith and Holofernes.

Tools of the Trade: How Parker Solar Probe Will Study the Sun

Our Parker Solar Probe will get closer to the Sun than any spacecraft has ever gone – it will fly right through the Sun’s corona, part of the Sun’s atmosphere.

This spacecraft is full of cutting-edge technology, from its heat shield down to its guidance and control systems. It also carries four suites of advanced instruments designed to study the Sun in a multitude of ways.  

1. Measuring particles

Two of Parker Solar Probe’s instrument suites are focused on measuring particles – electrons and ions – within the corona.

One of these particle-measuring instrument suites is SWEAP (Solar Wind Electrons Alphas and Protons). SWEAP counts the most common particles in the solar wind – the Sun’s constant outflow of material – and measures their properties, like velocity, density and temperature. Gathering this information about solar wind particles will help scientists better understand why the solar wind reaches supersonic speeds and exactly which part of the Sun the particles come from.

One instrument in the SWEAP suite is the Solar Probe Cup. Most of the instruments on Parker Solar Probe stay safe and cool in the shadow of the heat shield, but the Solar Probe Cup is one of the few that sticks out. That’s so it can capture and measure particles streaming straight out from the Sun, and it had to go through some intense testing to get ready for this position in the Sun’s incredibly hot corona.  

Credit: Levi Hutmacher/Michigan Engineering

The ISʘIS suite (pronounced EE-sis, and including the symbol for the Sun in its acronym) also measures particles. ISʘIS is short for Integrated Science Investigation of the Sun, and this instrument suite measures particles that move faster – and therefore have more energy – than the solar wind.

These measurements will help scientists understand these particles’ lifecycles – where they came from, how they got to be traveling so fast (these particles can reach speeds more than half the speed of light!) and what path they take as they travel away from the Sun and into interplanetary space.

2. Taking pictures – but not of the Sun’s surface.

WISPR (Wide-Field Imager for Parker Solar Probe) has the only two cameras on Parker Solar Probe – but they’re not pointed directly at the Sun. Instead, WISPR looks out the side of the spacecraft, in the direction it’s traveling, looking at the space Parker Solar Probe is about to fly through. From that vantage point, WISPR captures images of structures within the corona like coronal mass ejections, or CMEs. CMEs are clouds of solar material that occasionally explode from the Sun at millions of miles per hour. Because this solar material is magnetized, CMEs can trigger geomagnetic storms when they reach Earth – which, in turn, can cause effects like auroras and even, in extreme cases, power outages.  

Right now, our observations of events like these come from satellites orbiting near Earth, so WISPR will give us a whole new perspective. And, scientists will be able to combine WISPR’s images with Parker Solar Probe’s direct particle measurements to get a better idea of how these structures change as they travel.

3. Studying electric & magnetic fields

The FIELDS instrument suite is appropriately named: It’s what scientists will use to study the electric and magnetic fields in the corona.

Electric and magnetic fields are key to understanding what happens, not only on the Sun, but throughout space, because they the primary driver accelerating charged particles. In particular, a process called magnetic reconnection – when magnetic field lines explosively realign, sending particles rocketing away at incredible speeds – is thought to drive solar explosions, as well as space weather effects on Earth, like the aurora.

FIELDS measures electric and magnetic field at high time resolution, meaning it takes lots of measurements in a short amount of time, to track these processes and shed some light on the mechanics underlying the Sun’s behavior. FIELDS’ measurements are precisely synced up with those of the SWEAP suite (one of the sets of instruments studying particles) so that scientists can match up the immediate effects that electric and magnetic fields have on the material of the solar wind.

Parker Solar Probe launches summer 2018 on its mission to study the Sun. Keep up with the latest on the mission at nasa.gov/solarprobe or follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

She's a Ballerina. And a Quantum Physicist. And Maybe an Astronaut.

For the past decade, Merritt Moore has been living a double life as both a professional ballerina and a quantum physicist. While dancing with Zurich Ballet and Boston Ballet, she received her undergrad degree from Harvard in physics, and she's currently pursuing a PhD in quantum physics at Oxfor...

“I think it’s silly to categorize people as either having an analytical brain or a creative brain. Creativity is needed all the time in the lab to think of new solutions and to visualize problems in different ways. And in the dance world, being analytical allows you to stretch the limits of your physical abilities while finding new, innovative forms of movement.”

The Marathon World Record Holder the World Forgot

Two weeks after Kathrine Switzer made headlines at Boston in 1967, 13-year-old Maureen Mancuso quietly shattered the women's world record. Few people noticed.

Without training, this 13-year-old shattered world records for running in 1967 – unfortunately, it happened shortly after Kathrine Switzer’s headline-making Boston marathon entry. Maureen Mancuso’s feat was all but forgotten.

I know I never (personally) post things like this but I saw this on the news and I really wanted to share it.