Archive for August, 2008
Solar System Travel Posters
Posted by Danielle in Art & Architecture, Travel & Leisure on August 29, 2008
My husband pointed out this great blog post, featuring travel posters to other times and places, real and fictional. One of the artists showcased is Steve Thomas, whose solar system travel posters are simply captivating. These are but a few, and you can get them all (plus Rivendell!) in large-format calendar form for 2009! Fantastic stuff, I hope to see more from him soon!
Dark Skies
Posted by Danielle in Perspectives on August 28, 2008
This APOD image from last month shows a rare thing indeed: a night sky virtually unpolluted by light (over Death Valley, California.) Above is just a small portion of this 360-degree panorama image, get the whole thing at high-resolution for maximum impact!
Astro-philatelics, part 28
Posted by Danielle in Currency & Postage on August 27, 2008
NASA Tribute Chopper
Posted by Danielle in Entertainment, Novelty Items on August 26, 2008
Let me just state up front that I found the “stars” of American Chopper completely and utterly OBNOXIOUS… but they did happen to do a really spectacular tribute bike themed around Space Shuttle Discovery‘s Return to Flight mission in 2005, STS-114.
Orange County Choppers‘ site is all Flash-based, so I can’t give a direct link to the photo album of this bike, but it’s on the third page of “On-Air Theme Bikes”, under the Choppers section on the main page. I’ve taken screencaps to show here.
The bike’s episodes are #58 & #59, which aired October 3 & 10, 2005. Minus the stars’ antics, fights and general… drama… the bike is a thing of beauty, and if these guys have one thing right, it’s an eye for minute detail. The gas tank is shuttle-shaped, the exhaust pipes (shown below, my favorite detail) are tipped with a replica of the Space Shuttle Main Engines, and the airbrush work and detailed painting throughout is just… spectacular. I particularly like the miniature orbiting shuttle “spinners” on the wheels, front and back. The gallery is definitely worth a look!
Rocket Woman Note Cards
Posted by Danielle in Cards & Stationary on August 25, 2008
These notecards are tremendous. Would love some.
Cygnus X-1
Posted by Danielle in Perspectives on August 21, 2008
An artist’s impression of Black Hole Candidate Cygnus X-1 was featured on APOD earlier this month. (Very large printable version at that link.) Black holes are mysterious creatures.
Explanation: Is that a black hole? Quite possibly. The Cygnus X-1 binary star system contains one of the best candidates for a black hole. The system was discovered because it is one of the brightest X-ray sources on the sky, shining so bright it was detected by the earliest rockets carrying cameras capable of seeing the previously unknown X-ray sky. The star’s very name indicates that it is the single brightest X-ray source in the constellation of the Swan Cygnus. Data indicate that a compact object there contains about nine times the mass of the Sun and changes its brightness continually on several time scales, at least down to milliseconds. Such behavior is expected for a black hole, and difficult to explain with other models. Pictured above is an artistic impression of the Cygnus X-1 system. On the left is the bright blue supergiant star designated HDE 226868, which is estimated as having about 30 times the mass of our Sun. Cygnus X-1 is depicted on the right, connected to its supergiant companion by a stream of gas, and surrounded by an impressive accretion disk. The bright star in the Cygnus X-1 system is visible with a small telescope. Strangely, the Cygnus X-1 black hole candidate appears to have formed without a bright supernova explosion.
Astro-philatelics, part 27
Posted by Danielle in Currency & Postage on August 20, 2008
These stamp sets were released in 2007 by Guinea-Bissau, commemorating the 50th anniversary of Sputniks 1 and 2. Lovely artwork!
The Witch's Broom
Posted by Danielle in Perspectives on August 19, 2008
I don’t usually post today’s APOD — I usually wait a few days — but, well, today’s APOD photo is nothing short of spectacular. Since this is yet another section of the vast and wonderful Veil Nebula, I’m not surprised it caught my eye! To put it in geek speak, that whole region of the sky is made of WIN.
Credit & Copyright: Adam Block, Mount Lemmon SkyCenter, Univ. Arizona
Explanation: Ten thousand years ago, before the dawn of recorded human history, a new light must suddenly have appeared in the night sky and faded after a few weeks. Today we know this light was an exploding star and record the colorful expanding cloud as the Veil Nebula. Pictured above is the west end of the Veil Nebula known technically as NGC 6960 but less formally as the Witch’s Broom Nebula. The expanding debris cloud gains its colors by sweeping up and exciting existing nearby gas. The supernova remnant lies about 1400 light-years away towards the constellation of Cygnus. This Witch’s Broom actually spans over three times the angular size of the full Moon. The bright star 52 Cygni is visible with the unaided eye from a dark location but unrelated to the ancient supernova.
Rocketship Journal
Posted by Danielle in Cards & Stationary on August 18, 2008
This rocket ship journal is A5 with approx.45 pages of white 90 gsm paper cut to size by hand. The covers are adorned with digital images printed on quality card, laminated for durability and superb gloss finish. Finished with hand stitched edges, for a personal touch.
100,000 Orbits
Posted by Danielle in Perspectives on August 14, 2008
This image released on Monday commemorates the 100,000th orbit of the Hubble Space Telescope! That’s a lot of mileage!!
In commemoration of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope completing its 100,000th orbit in its 18th year of exploration and discovery, scientists at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., have aimed Hubble to take a snapshot of a dazzling region of celestial birth and renewal. Hubble peered into a small portion of the nebula near the star cluster NGC 2074 (upper, left). The region is a firestorm of raw stellar creation, perhaps triggered by a nearby supernova explosion. It lies about 170,000 light-years away near the Tarantula nebula, one of the most active star-forming regions in our Local Group of galaxies. This representative color image was taken on August 10, 2008, with Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. Red shows emission from sulfur atoms, green from glowing hydrogen, and blue from glowing oxygen.
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About Silver Rockets
This blog celebrates space exploration, human spaceflight and the heavens, through lots and lots ofimages.
My name is Danielle Signor, and I am a space cadet.
This is a blog, NOT A SHOP. Click the images for their source or purchase link, if available.
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