Why not say “I love you, space nerd” with a set of Rihga Royal Hotel Planetary Chocolates?

Combining astronomy and good eats sounds too good to be true. But in their celestial collection of planetary chocolates, chocolatier L’éclat of the Righa Royal Hotel Japan have done just that. The chocolaty solar system includes Mercury (coconut mango), Venus (cream lemon), Earth (cacao), Mars (orange praline), Jupiter (vanilla), Saturn (rum raisin), Uranus (milk tea) and Neptune (capuccino) – sorry, Pluto is no longer considered a planet.

Each are sold individually (400 yen) but if you order the set (3,800 yen) they’ll throw in the Sun – a flaring delicacy of criollo chocolate and pineapple. You can order online (3,200 yen; Sun not included)or you can use a forwarding service.
— Spoon & Tamago

Image Credit & Copyright: Luis Argerich, luisargerich.com

A quick post for your Wednesday…

This month, four of the five naked-eye planets gather along the eastern horizon near dawn. The celestial grouping is seen here just before sunrise on May 5, from a beach near Buenos Aires, Argentina. Starting near the top of the frame, the brightest beacon is Venus. Mercury is below and right of Venus and brilliant Jupiter is lower still, near image center. Below Jupiter, Mars is relatively faint and struggles the most to shine through a thin cloud bank and the warming twilight glow. Watch, and as the month progresses the tantalizing configuration will change, with Mars and Jupiter moving higher while Venus and Mercury wander through the sky closer to the rising sun.

Credit & Copyright: David Kaplan

An amazing photo of the Swiss Alps, with a pre-dawn Moon and Venus in the sky. Gorgeous, excuse me while I set this to be my desktop….

Sometimes a morning sky can be a combination of serene and surreal. Such a sky perhaps existed before sunrise this past Sunday as viewed from a snowy slope in eastern Switzerland. Quiet clouds blanket the above scene, lit from beneath by lights from the village of Trübbach. A snow covered mountain, Mittlerspitz, poses dramatically on the upper left, hovering over the small town of Balzers, Liechtenstein far below. Peaks from the Alps can be seen across the far right, just below the freshly rising Sun. Visible on the upper right are the crescent Moon and the bright planet Venus. Venus will remain in the morning sky all month, although it will likely not be found in such a photogenic setting.

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

Astronomical observation goes back to the dawn of civilization, and digging around online yielded this neat interactive atlas of ancient astronomy — starts at continents and refines on down from there. Also, the Wikipedia entry on archaeoastronomy is pretty darned extensive, and covers a lot of different cultures and time periods. (Ancient civilizations are a fascination of mine, so the amount of pictures made me a little giddy.)

Archaeoastronomy can be applied to all cultures and all time periods. The meanings of the sky vary from culture to culture; nevertheless there are scientific methods which can be applied across cultures when examining ancient beliefs. It is perhaps the need to balance the social and scientific aspects of archaeoastronomy which led Clive Ruggles to describe it as: “…[A] field with academic work of high quality at one end but uncontrolled speculation bordering on lunacy at the other.”

As for me, I’m just going to oggle the Nebra skydisk:

I’ve got the Moon on my brain today, so here’s some Moon-spam for ya! First, the above sketch by Deirdre Kelleghan shows Venus emerging from the limb of the moon, following a lunar occultation, shown below:

Next, this was last Friday’s APOD, of the Moon (the LARGE, faint crescent) and Venus (the small bright crescent):

This next image is the latest, best far-side map of the Moon, courtesy of SELENE/Kaguya (and today’s LPOD) in glorious shades of grey…

…which is simplified from this color version, downloadable in ENORMO-VISION.

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!