Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 13, 2015
Wednesday, January 14, 2015
1000 years of comets and meteors!
speaking of open access, i found this great site, the public domain review: a project of the open knowledge foundation.
on that site there is a collection called flowers of the sky which shows historic depictions of comets, meteors, and meteorites over almost a 1000 year period. very neat! check out this link for all the original sources.
also a good bit of dirty space news in that above compilation!
on that site there is a collection called flowers of the sky which shows historic depictions of comets, meteors, and meteorites over almost a 1000 year period. very neat! check out this link for all the original sources.
 |
| Augsburger Wunderzeichenbuch (The Book of Miracle), c. 1552 |
 |
| Augsburger Wunderzeichenbuch, (Comet mit einem grosen Schwantz), c. 1552 |
 |
| Augsburger Wunderzeichenbuch (Comet, 1500) |
 |
| Image from A Popular Treatise on Comets (1861) by James C. Watson |
 |
| Drawings of a meteorite falling in Ukraine in 1866, by Wilhelm Ritter von Haidinger |
 |
| Image from Flowers of the Sky (1879) by Richard A. Proctor |
 |
| Plate XI from The Trouvelot Astronomical Drawings (1881) |
 |
| Leonid Meteor Storm, as seen over North America on the night of November 12-13, 1833, from E. Weiß’s Bilderatlas der Sternenwelt (1888) |
Thursday, January 1, 2015
resolutions? me? what are you implying?
i'm not a huge fan of resolutions, even if i mentally throw out a few challenges for myself on new years day after reflecting on the accomplishments of the previous year.
new years day is posed as a "magic" day where we can overhaul our bad behaviours (usually overindulgence of the holiday season) and start anew. we build elaborate time justifications to assuage our guilt.
i'm all for positive improvements in daily life, but i like to think in terms of the big picture, nicely summarized in the top five regrets of the dying, posted by the guardian.
and of course the great bill watterson provides amusing perspective with his wonderful characters calvin and hobbes.
Monday, November 17, 2014
Friday, June 6, 2014
Thursday, May 8, 2014
most detailed simulation of our universe.
this is your universe, simulated. watch full screen and enjoy!
"The Illustris simulation is the most ambitious computer simulation of our Universe yet performed. The calculation tracks the expansion of the universe, the gravitational pull of matter onto itself, the motion of cosmic gas, as well as the formation of stars and black holes. These physical components and processes are all modeled starting from initial conditions resembling the very young universe 300,000 years after the Big Bang and until the present day, spanning over 13.8 billion years of cosmic evolution. The simulated volume contains tens of thousands of galaxies captured in high-detail, covering a wide range of masses, rates of star formation, shapes, sizes, and with properties that agree well with the galaxy population observed in the real universe. The simulations were run on supercomputers in France, Germany, and the US. The largest was run on 8,192 compute cores, and took 19 million CPU hours. A single state-of-the-art desktop computer would require more than 2000 years to perform this calculation."
Find out more at:
http://www.illustris-project.org
Publication:
"Properties of galaxies reproduced by a hydrodynamic simulation", Vogelsberger, Genel, Springel, Torrey, Sijacki, Xu, Snyder, Bird, Nelson, Hernquist, Nature 509, 177-182 (08 May 2014) doi:10.1038/nature13316
"The Illustris simulation is the most ambitious computer simulation of our Universe yet performed. The calculation tracks the expansion of the universe, the gravitational pull of matter onto itself, the motion of cosmic gas, as well as the formation of stars and black holes. These physical components and processes are all modeled starting from initial conditions resembling the very young universe 300,000 years after the Big Bang and until the present day, spanning over 13.8 billion years of cosmic evolution. The simulated volume contains tens of thousands of galaxies captured in high-detail, covering a wide range of masses, rates of star formation, shapes, sizes, and with properties that agree well with the galaxy population observed in the real universe. The simulations were run on supercomputers in France, Germany, and the US. The largest was run on 8,192 compute cores, and took 19 million CPU hours. A single state-of-the-art desktop computer would require more than 2000 years to perform this calculation."
Find out more at:
http://www.illustris-project.org
Publication:
"Properties of galaxies reproduced by a hydrodynamic simulation", Vogelsberger, Genel, Springel, Torrey, Sijacki, Xu, Snyder, Bird, Nelson, Hernquist, Nature 509, 177-182 (08 May 2014) doi:10.1038/nature13316
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
observing galaxies with a 4-metre telescope
here's a video i created in about the last 24 hours. it has been a fun little project with a hack day feel :)
it shows scenes from one night observing galaxies with the 4-metre Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) at Siding Spring Observatory in New South Wales, Australia.
all of the footage was taken with a GoPro camera and edited together with imovie.
enjoy!
SAMI is the Sydney Australian Astronomical Observatory Multi-object Integral Field Spectrograph, a brand new instrument on the 4-meter AAT. Integral field spectroscopy allows a unique view of how stars and gas zoom around inside distant galaxies because we collect dozens of spectra across the entire face of each galaxy.
The new technology includes the bundles of wires shown in orange and silver which plug into the metal plate. In the silver cords are 61 optical fibres! One bundle points at a single galaxy and captures its stars and gas swirling around in 61 different spots across the face of the galaxy! There are 13 of these galaxy hexabundles, making the survey uniquely efficient.
The new technology has been designed to fit inside the original photographic plate base structure built in the 1970s. It looks solid, doesnt it? I like all the manual dials, and there's even an eyepiece!
The only negative is that after observing with one configuration for 4 hours (in a series of 30 minute exposures), we have to climb into the cage in the middle of the night to manually unplug and replug a different plate. It's an active observing campaign!
This footage was shot on the night of 27 April 2014, the 40th Anniversary of the first starlight ever collected by the AAT.
it shows scenes from one night observing galaxies with the 4-metre Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) at Siding Spring Observatory in New South Wales, Australia.
all of the footage was taken with a GoPro camera and edited together with imovie.
enjoy!
SAMI is the Sydney Australian Astronomical Observatory Multi-object Integral Field Spectrograph, a brand new instrument on the 4-meter AAT. Integral field spectroscopy allows a unique view of how stars and gas zoom around inside distant galaxies because we collect dozens of spectra across the entire face of each galaxy.
The new technology includes the bundles of wires shown in orange and silver which plug into the metal plate. In the silver cords are 61 optical fibres! One bundle points at a single galaxy and captures its stars and gas swirling around in 61 different spots across the face of the galaxy! There are 13 of these galaxy hexabundles, making the survey uniquely efficient.
The new technology has been designed to fit inside the original photographic plate base structure built in the 1970s. It looks solid, doesnt it? I like all the manual dials, and there's even an eyepiece!
The only negative is that after observing with one configuration for 4 hours (in a series of 30 minute exposures), we have to climb into the cage in the middle of the night to manually unplug and replug a different plate. It's an active observing campaign!
This footage was shot on the night of 27 April 2014, the 40th Anniversary of the first starlight ever collected by the AAT.
Sunday, April 20, 2014
silent storms
Happy Easter Sunday: the first Sunday after the Full Moon that occurs on or after the vernal equinox. they really take the hot cross buns tradition seriously here in australia. i've eaten SO MANY in recent weeks since they're all over the farmer's markets. i dont think i knew what they actually were until i moved here - small, square fruit bread. yum!
now enjoy this timelapse of some fantastic northern lights sequences over norway.
Silent Storms from Ole C. Salomonsen on Vimeo.
now enjoy this timelapse of some fantastic northern lights sequences over norway.
Silent Storms from Ole C. Salomonsen on Vimeo.
Friday, April 4, 2014
tiny sydney
i just found a few videos of sydney by filippo rivetti that are stunning!
the first is a tilt-shift timelapse called "tiny sydney."
Tiny Sydney from Filippo Rivetti on Vimeo.
the second is a few minutes long, but has some incredible sequences of motion around and moving through sydney. i particularly love the sunset and zoom that starts at 2:00.
Time to Sydney from Filippo Rivetti on Vimeo.
worth watching both of these all the way through at fullscreen!
the first is a tilt-shift timelapse called "tiny sydney."
Tiny Sydney from Filippo Rivetti on Vimeo.
the second is a few minutes long, but has some incredible sequences of motion around and moving through sydney. i particularly love the sunset and zoom that starts at 2:00.
Time to Sydney from Filippo Rivetti on Vimeo.
worth watching both of these all the way through at fullscreen!
Wednesday, April 2, 2014
How to Solve a Physics Problem
most of my undergraduate days... i tried to let 13 and 14 linger before reading parts b and c of the problem :)
How to Solve a Physics Problem by SMBC.
How to Solve a Physics Problem by SMBC.
Saturday, March 22, 2014
cosmic inflation
did you hear about the big physics news that came out this week? a "spectacular" discovery showing observations consistent with the illusive theory of cosmic inflation?
the topic is subtle, but the PhD comic below does a fantastic job of explaining the discovery.
as with any science experiment, i will let myself get much more excited when another experiment verifies the result, but in the meantime, there's a fascinating discussion happening on a facebook page created just before the press release came out. there are many eminent physicists taking part in the discussion, and it seems like an interesting avenue for real scientific debate in the future.
the topic is subtle, but the PhD comic below does a fantastic job of explaining the discovery.
as with any science experiment, i will let myself get much more excited when another experiment verifies the result, but in the meantime, there's a fascinating discussion happening on a facebook page created just before the press release came out. there are many eminent physicists taking part in the discussion, and it seems like an interesting avenue for real scientific debate in the future.
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
painted stone: asteroids in the SDSS
the sloan digital sky survey is a large astronomy project that has looked at a huge area of the sky several times over the last ~15 years. from this data comes the ability to identify objects that move position over time.
the video below shows the orbital positions of 100,000 asteroids in our solar system observed by sloan. fantastic visualization by astronomer alex parker. enjoy!
Painted Stone: Asteroids in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey from Alex Parker on Vimeo.
the details:
the video below shows the orbital positions of 100,000 asteroids in our solar system observed by sloan. fantastic visualization by astronomer alex parker. enjoy!
Painted Stone: Asteroids in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey from Alex Parker on Vimeo.
the details:
Over 100,000 asteroids and their colors, as seen by a single remarkable survey telescope.
This animation shows the orbital motions of over 100,000 of the asteroids observed by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), with colors illustrating the compositional diversity measured by the SDSS five-color camera. The relative sizes of each asteroid are also illustrated.
All main-belt asteroids and Trojan asteroids with orbits known to high precision are shown. The animation is rendered with a timestep of 3 days.
The compositional gradient of the asteroid belt is clearly visible, with green Vesta-family members in the inner belt fading through the blue C-class asteroids in the outer belt, and the deep red Trojan swarms beyond that.
Occasional diagonal slashes that appear in the animation are the SDSS survey beams; these appear because the animation is rendered at near the survey epoch.
The average orbital distances of Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and Jupiter are illustrated with rings.
Saturday, February 22, 2014
what a leader can do
a quote by david foster wallace about what it means to be a "leader" and how coming across a real leader makes you feel. i've known a few true leaders and this is right on.
 |
| Quote by David Foster Wallace. Print by Debbie Millman |
Friday, February 14, 2014
Friday, January 24, 2014
the art of astrophysics
MIT has initiated a contest called the art of astrophysics so you can share your views of just how beautiful the universe can be. categories are: data visualization, movies and animation, astrophotography, painting/drawing/print, poetry/music/rap, sculpture, timelapse photography, dancing, fiber arts.
now for some inspiration and then get submitting!
DATA VISUALIZATION
MOVIES & ANIMATION
the original eames Powers of Ten video (1977)
ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY
The Big Picture as featured on APOD.
 |
| Credit: Dennis di Cicco/Sean Walker |
PAINTING, DRAWING, and PRINT
 |
| Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh |
SCULPTURE
 |
| The Humble Telescope (link) |
TIMELAPSE PHOTOGRAPHY
POETRY, MUSIC, & RAP
"Pluto, the Previous Planet" hacked together in one day by astropixie and the transneptunian objectors at dotAstronomy 3.
DANCING
FIBER ARTS
 |
| Crochet model of hyperbolic plane by Daina Taimina |
Thursday, January 16, 2014
dirty space news: aliens
i dont know who to give credit to for creating this cartoon, but i saw it in a tweet from i f*cking love science.
it all makes sense now.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)