During Descent

Proposal for GIF IT UP 2016

Another oldie from my draft folder. I’d like to do a mass deletion of 99% of my unposted drafts.

Arrival at an Exoplanet, 1983, by David A. Hardy, painted in gouache originally for the cover of Analog Science Fiction/Fact, June 1983.” 

(AstroArt)

Saturn seen from Titan, illustrated by David Egge, 1978.

The Pipe Nebula : East of Antares, dark markings sprawl through crowded star fields toward the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. Cataloged in the early 20th century by astronomer E. E. Barnard, the obscuring interstellar dust clouds include B59, B72, B77 and B78, seen in against the starry background. Here, their combined shape suggests a pipe stem and bowl, and so the dark nebula’s popular name is the Pipe Nebula. The deep and expansive view covers a full 10 by 10 degree field in the pronounceable constellation Ophiuchus. The Pipe Nebula is part of the Ophiuchus dark cloud complex located at a distance of about 450 light-years. Dense cores of gas and dust within the Pipe Nebula are collapsing to form stars. via NASA

A Colorful Moon The Moon is normally seen in subtle shades of grey or yellow. But small, measurable color differences have been greatly exaggerated to make this telescopic, multicolored, moonscape captured during the Moon’s full phase. The different colors are recognized to correspond to real differences in the chemical makeup of the lunar surface. Blue hues reveal titanium rich areas while orange and purple colors show regions relatively poor in titanium and iron. The familiar Sea of Tranquility, or Mare Tranquillitatis, is the blue area in the upper right corner of the frame. White lines radiate across the orange-hued southern lunar highlands from 85 kilometer wide ray crater Tycho at bottom left. Above it, darker rays from crater Copernicus extend into the Sea of Rains (Mare Imbrium) at the upper left. Calibrated by rock samples from the Apollo missions, similar multicolor images from spacecraft have been used to explore the Moon’s global surface composition. Image Credit & Copyright: László Francsics

Dark Spot and Jovian ‘Galaxy’ - This enhanced-color image of a mysterious dark spot on Jupiter seems to reveal a Jovian “galaxy” of swirling storms. Juno acquired this JunoCam image on Feb. 2, 2017, at an altitude of 9,000 miles (14,500 kilometers) above the giant planet’s cloud tops. This publicly selected target was simply titled “Dark Spot.” In ground-based images it was difficult to tell that it is a dark storm. Citizen scientist Roman Tkachenko enhanced the color to bring out the rich detail in the storm and surrounding clouds. Just south of the dark storm is a bright, oval-shaped storm with high, bright, white clouds, reminiscent of a swirling galaxy. As a final touch, he rotated the image 90 degrees, turning the picture into a work of art.

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Roman Tkachenko

‘distant.03′

book cover. 2017

Jon Lomberg