Tag Archives: Beauty

Br Guy Diary: February 22, 2015

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This entry is part 6 of 63 in the series Diary

This week has been a week of travel, with a bit of science and a lot of outreach. I experience a blizzard in Boston and warm, dry days in California; talked about Vesta and ET’s; and met some alpacas… I arrived in Boston for the Boskone SF convention just before the snow. I also got a morning’s work in, speaking with Cy Opeil at Boston College. He has a lab set up that we’re collaborating with to measure meteorite thermal and physical properties at temperatures down to near absolute zero. The convention was a whirlwind – and that was just the blizzard outside! I actually never left the hotel, given the weather, which meant I stayed warmer than I usually do at that convention. Monday my flight left on time, and so by Monday evening I was in Merced, California, where over the next three days I gave four presentations at the University of California Merced. Great students, great conversations. I’ve … Continue reading →

Apollo 8 Earthrise

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In December of 1968, the crew of Apollo 8 became the first people to leave our home planet and travel to another body in space. But as crew members Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders all later recalled, the most important thing they discovered was Earth. Using photo mosaics and elevation data from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), this video commemorates the 45th anniversary of Apollo 8’s historic flight by recreating the moment when the crew first saw and photographed the Earth rising from behind the Moon. Narrator Andrew Chaikin, author of A Man on the Moon, sets the scene for a three-minute visualization of the view from both inside and outside the spacecraft accompanied by the onboard audio of the astronauts. The visualization draws on numerous historical sources, including the actual cloud pattern on Earth from the ESSA-7 satellite and dozens of photographs taken by Apollo 8, and it reveals new, historically significant information about the Earthrise photographs. It … Continue reading →

Saturn: Beauty in Sight and Sound

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Created by stitching together over 30,000 photographs taken by the robotic Cassini spacecraft – No 3D models, CGI or texture maps used! Set to “Adagio for Strings” performed by the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Dmitry Sitkovetsky. This excerpt from the IMAX movie “In Saturn’s Rings” never fails to bring tears to my eyes due to its sheer beauty. Watch closely as the razor-thin rings momentarily vanishes as orbiter crosses the plane of their orbit. The Cassini orbiter was launched in October 1997, and entered orbit around Saturn on June 30, 2004. Its mission has been extended twice, and is currently scheduled to continue through September of 2017. Cassini has discovered plumes of water vapor pouring from its icy moon Enceladus, and discovered a new type of “Dusty Plasma” near Enceladus. Cassini landed a probe on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, and has imaged hydrocarbon oceans and river-like structures there. Cassini has witnessed tiny shepherd moons within Saturn’s rings, and … Continue reading →