Posts Tagged television

Astronomy stamps honor long-running BBC program and host

Posted by Danielle in Currency & Postage, Entertainment on February 15, 2007

Sir Patrick Moore and his astronomy stamps

The Telegraph reported Tuesday that Sir Patrick Moore, host of the BBC program The Sky at Night, was honored with Royal Mail stamps, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the show. The Sky at Night is the longest-running program in the world to still feature its original host. Moore selected the six astronomical objects featured on the stamps.

Six postage stamps, honoring Moore and The Sky at Night

“I feel deeply honoured. I would like to think that we have played a part in introducing astronomy to people who would otherwise have paid no real attention to the heavens. Many years hence, philatelists will still be admiring these stamps paying tribute, not to me, but to The Sky At Night.” — Sir Patrick Moore

(Found via Centauri Dreams. I bought the above FDC on eBay from 1 Stop Stamp Shop, and the seller was most pleasant to deal with. He has a dozen or so variations of this stamp release, selling fast if you want some!)

galaxies, nebulae, popular culture, stamps, television

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Lost in space

Posted by Danielle in Entertainment on January 31, 2007

It is an unfortunate fact that things don’t always seem as important, at the time, as they later become. So it was with the missing Apollo 11 landing footage tapes, which, were they not lost, contain a far superior recording of the iconic first step for man and giant leap for mankind. These recordings, “a highly specialized format that appeared to have limited value in the pre-digital age”, were stored and forgotten in the 1970s, possibly never to be seen again.

In an uncertain time for future NASA funding, crisp Aldrin and Armstrong images would be perfect to help excite the present generations about returning to the Moon, as well as space exploration in general. The commercial opportunities are not to be ignored either; nothing adds the proper punch of inspiration quite as well as a bit of spaceflight footage. No matter the age, mankind is inclined to look up.

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apollo, astronauts, moon, space artifacts, spaceflight, television

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Sprucing up orbiting interiors

Posted by Danielle in Home & Office on January 30, 2007

Martha Stewart talks with space station astronauts Michael Lopez-Alegria and Sunita Williams via a video link. Image courtesy of USA Today and The Martha Stewart Show.

Last week USA Today reported on a remarkable video call between the current ISS crew and Martha Stewart, which took place January 22. While they quip that “no place seems less likely to interest Martha Stewart, the guru of gracious living,” her significant other, Charles Simonyi, heads to the ISS in April as the fifth space tourist, and I’m sure Martha merely wanted to make sure that they put out the good linens.

All joking aside, however, this call brings up an interesting, surely deprioritized factor in orbital living — is there any way to “home-ify” a living space where every square inch of usable space is, well, used?

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celebrities, homemaking, interior design, space station, television

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I want my MTV.

Posted by Danielle in Advertising & Media on August 7, 2006

MTV's first broadcast images, featuring shots from the Apollo moonlandings

If you’ve never seen the above iconic representations of MTV, congratulations, you’re the last on your block. Few MTV logo spots are remotely as memorable (the girl brandishing a chainsaw, cutting the front off a television set comes to mind, but that’s only because of watching Ferris Bueller too many times to count.) In many ways, the Apollo footage was representative of MTV’s achievements, groundbreaking efforts to be different from other cable channels at the time, and their impact on the music industry as a whole.

If you were one of the lucky few watching… the first thing you saw was the MTV logo superimposed over the flag an astronaut is sticking into the moon. “It was public domain,” Freston recalls. “We said, ‘Hey, let’s rip off man’s greatest moment.’ It seemed a rock & roll thing to do.”
— Entertainment Weekly

Twenty-five years later, MTV still embraces the Moon Man image (shown at top right, chosen for their Video Music Awards, which started in 1984.) For a more complete history of MTV, see the Wikipedia article.