Archive for category Books & Literature
Antique Meteors
Posted by Danielle in Art & Architecture, Books & Literature on July 23, 2010
The Meteor of 1860 by Frederic Church. Courtesy: Judith Filenbaum Hernstadt (painting photographed by Gerald L. Carr)
Yesterday’s APOD featured a painting and poem that documented a fireball event in 1860. The Meteor of 1860 by Frederic Church is a beautiful work of art, and dovetails nicely with this snippet of Walt Whitman’s Year of Meteors:
…the strange huge meteor procession, dazzling and clear, shooting over our heads,
(A moment, a moment long, it sail’d its balls of unearthly light over our heads,
Then departed, dropt in the night, and was gone;)
Here’s the story of how these two works were connected to the cosmic phenomenon, and eachother:
Frederic Church (1826-1900), American landscape painter of the Hudson River School, painted what he saw in nature. And on July 20th, 1860, he saw a spectacular string of fireball meteors cross the Catskill evening sky, an extremely rare Earth-grazing meteor procession. From New York City, poet Walt Whitman (1819-1892) also wrote of the “… strange huge meteor procession, dazzling and clear, shooting over our heads” in his poem Year of Meteors (1859-60). But the inspiration for Whitman’s words was forgotten. His astronomical reference became a mystery, the subject of scholarly debate until Texas State University physicists Donald Olson and Russell Doescher, English professor Marilynn Olson, and Honors Program student Ava Pope, located reports documenting the date and timing of the spectacular meteor procession. The breakthrough was spotting the connection with Church’s relatively little-known painting. Fittingly, the forensic astronomy team’s work was just published, on the 150th anniversary of the cosmic event that inspired both poet and painter.
High-Flying
Posted by Danielle in Books & Literature, News & Happenings, Picspam on June 18, 2010
Image Credit: NASA/Carla Cioffi
I’ve seen and heard snippets of this poem, but never read it in entirety before this week. It is a beautiful thing. (Hat tip to John C. Wright for posting it!) It seems to fit well with this lovely launch photo — the rocket in question delivered three individuals into orbit on Wednesday, and to the ISS yesterday.
High Flight
by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds…and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of…wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew.
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
The Galaxy
Posted by Danielle in Books & Literature on April 26, 2010
Credit & Copyright: Serge Brunier, sergebrunier.com
The Galaxy
by Henry Wadsworth LongfellowTorrent of light and river of the air,
Along whose bed the glimmering stars are seen
Like gold and silver sands in some ravine
Where mountain streams have left their channels bare !
The Spaniard sees in thee the pathway, where
His patron saint descended in the sheen
Of his celestial armor on serene
And quiet nights, when all the heavens were fair.
Not this I see, nor yet the ancient fable
Of Phaeton’s wild course, that scorched the skies
Where’er the hoofs of his hot coursers trod ;
But the white drift of worlds o’er chasms of sable,
The star dust, that is whirled aloft and flies
From the invisible chariot-wheels of God.
To Watch the Moon on High
Posted by Danielle in Books & Literature on April 19, 2010
Who but is Pleased to Watch the Moon on High
by William Wordsworth, 1846Who but is pleased to watch the moon on high
Travelling where she from time to time enshrouds
Her head, and nothing loth her Majesty
Renounces, till among the scattered clouds
One with its kindling edge declares that soon
Will reappear before the uplifted eye
A Form as bright, as beautiful a moon,
To glide in open prospect through clear sky.
Pity that such a promise e’er should prove
False in the issue, that yon seeming space
Of sky should be in truth the stedfast face
Of a cloud flat and dense, through which must move
(By transit not unlike man’s frequent doom)
The Wanderer lost in more determined gloom.
My Star
Posted by Danielle in Books & Literature on April 12, 2010
My Star
by Robert BrowningAll that I know
Of a certain star
Is, it can throw
(like an angled spar)
Now a dart of red,
Now a dart of blue ;
Till my friends have said
They would fain see, too,
My star that dartles the red and the blue !
Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled :
They must solace themselves with Saturn above it,
What matter to me if their star is a world ?
Mine has opened its soul to me ; therefore I love it.
The Night
Posted by Danielle in Books & Literature, Picspam on March 30, 2010
Credit: Heidi Schweiker, WIYN, NOAO, AURA, NSF
I started Tau Zero by Poul Anderson the other night, and was struck by his description of the size of the universe as a ship is about to launch out into it — so much so that I scribbled down one of the lines into a notebook, half-asleep. Here it is (emphasis mine), too good to keep to myself:
Staring away from sun and planet, you saw a crystal darkness huger than you dared comprehend. It did not appear totally black; there were light reflections within your eyeballs, if nowhere else; but it was the final night, that our kindly sky holds from us. The stars thronged it, unwinking, their brilliance winter-cold. Those sufficiently luminous to be seen from the ground showed their colors clear in space: steel-blue Vega, golden Capella, ember of Betelgeuse. And if you were not trained, the lesser members of the galaxy that had become visible were so many as to drown the familiar constellations. The night was wild with suns.
And the Milky Way belted heaven with ice and silver; and the Magellanic Clouds were not vague shimmers but roiling and glowing; and the Andromeda Galaxy gleamed sharp across more than a million light-years; and you felt your soul drowning in those depths and hastily pulled your vision back to the snug cabin that held you.
Another Science Fiction
Posted by Danielle in Advertising & Media, Books & Literature on March 16, 2010
When I was contemplating starting a “space and culture” blog back in 2006 (Common Themes, which became this blog you see here), one of my inspirations was “Space Age” advertisements from the 1950s-1970s. I have a collection of advertising books from those decades, and a copy of Science Magazine with the initial moon rock findings from Apollo 11 (basically, LPSC #1) with some spectacular examples of horn-rimmed-glasses-wearing, white-lab-coat-sporting scientists forging ahead in the name of PROGRESS. I love this stuff. I have a whole category here for advertising, because it’s just so darn fun.
I love the “future that never was” because hey, that future was pretty exciting, and a lot more optimistic than the grim realities of what’s happening right now at NASA. In fact, the “new vision” is so nebulous that one might say we don’t have a future in spaceflight at the moment. That may change, and certainly I hope it does… in the mean time, I have shelves of classic and modern science fiction to keep me dreaming.
Anyway, last week I was pointed to a fantastic upcoming book by two Twitter friends, linking to two separate, high-profile interviews and reviews — this author has a savvy publicist!! — and all I could think was, “at last, someone wrote a book FOR ME!” This book is Another Science Fiction: Advertising the Space Race 1957-1962 by Megan Prelinger. I must own this book, forthwith. Or, well, forthwith upon release.
From “Another Science Fiction”
I missed out on Apollo completely, and even most sci-fi I read was written before I was born. I long for the Space Age, having never experienced it personally. I’m a child of the Space Shuttle, and my era is ending, with nothing to replace it (on NASA’s part; full well I know that the next era will most likely be commercial, and I embrace that future with open arms. Maybe I’ll even get to go somewhere in my lifetime. Viva la space tourist!)
Which is all a really long way of saying, I really look forward to Another Science Fiction, and I can already tell I’ll be loving it from cover to cover. Preorder it on Amazon — it comes out on May 1st!
By purchasing this book through my links, I may possibly get an Amazon Affiliates payout… in another year or two. For more information, click here.
Poetry Corner
Posted by Danielle in Books & Literature on February 15, 2010
Credit & Copyright: Rogelio Bernal Andreo (Deep Sky Colors), deepskycolors.com
Thought I’d share yesterday’s lovely Valentine-y APOD with you all, and… some of my poetry. Starting with the older stuff first to shame myself into finishing some new stuff.
Sonnet #2 – On the stars
O what could be the color of a star?
These velvet skies, all strewn with broken glass
So distanced, merely guess at where they are
Omniscient flames that watch what comes to pass.
Some say a goddess shot them from a bow
They scattered from her fingertips like sand
To drift down through the heavens, diamond snow
Like crystal violets falling from her hand.
They twinkle with their carefree voices calling
We listen, but they never seem to mind.
Sometimes you see a gleaming fragment falling
And trailing astral glitter-gems behind.
Tonight I reach for heaven as I must
And try to catch the falling silver dust.
To The Stars!
Posted by Danielle in Art & Architecture, Books & Literature on February 12, 2010
First Spaceship on Venus (from the 1960 East Germany/Poland film)
Handpicking a few — just a few — from Dark Roasted Blend’s latest installment of their “Retro Future: To the Stars!” series of fantastic retro space art.
Fragment of the cover of The War Against The Rull by A. E. Van Vogt; image via modern_fred @ Flickr
These three are my favorites from this round; I find the space cowboys especially charming:
Fragment of the Grosset & Dunlap 1950 Book of Model Spaceships
Paper Astronaut
Posted by Danielle in Books & Literature, Children's Items on December 11, 2009
I found this little gem over in the craft section of the nearest Barnes & Noble. Paper Astronaut: The Paper Spacecraft Mission Manual is packed full of information, with some punch-outs in the back to assemble various spacecraft. I was surprised by how much of the book was info, and how relatively little of it was craft materials — it’s even got a foreword by Buzz Aldrin! It certainly wasn’t what I expected to find in the collage and papercraft section, and I’m delighted by how educational it is (speaking from experience with space-themed origami books and the like.)
This review sums it up pretty well:
“By the time you’re finished assembling paper models of spacecraft from the book’s meticulously die-cut blueprints, you’ll be intimately familiar with many of the details of 20 different iconic spacecraft, as well as the broad arc of space exploration history and the basic principles of spaceflight. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s certainly a blast.” ~SeedMagazine.com
I don’t often plug things so heavily, but if I had a little space cadet, I’d be buying them this for Christmas. It utterly charmed me — a delightful gift for any age!
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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.
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