Category: Wondrous Things

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Amazing…and Tantalizing

While data and pictures will be downloading for the next sixteen months, NASA's New Horizons probe already provided humanity with some astoundingly tantalizing photos of Pluto and it's main moon, Charon.

What strikes me the most about the color photos of Pluto is the color. They look like antique tintype prints. Even when I see the planet with the dark grey Charon immediately next to it, I still have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that this is the planet's actual color.

What's even more amazing to me is the fact that with the level of sunlight falling on these worlds and the speed at which New Horizons sped past that NASA was able to get any images whatsoever.

Science is cool.

And the fact that they can get closeups of the surface of this quality is nothing short of astounding—with even higher resolution images coming that will download over the coming months.

If Pluto weren't fascinating enough on it's own, Charton is revealing just as many surprises.

For example, how do you get a peak rising out of a circular depression? No one seems to know. What it looks like to me is that a space rock came in very, very slowly, and almost had a soft landing on an extremely plastic surface. Not traveling fast enough to form a traditional crater/ray structure, but fast enough to impact the surface and only slightly deform the surrounding terrain.

All I know is that after seeing these few images, it's obvious that humanity will have to return at some point for an even better look. I doubt it will happen in my lifetime, but it still fires the imagination—especially when you consider that we didn't get any sharp photos of Pluto's much more interesting face:

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Gigapixels of Andromeda

On January 5, NASA released an image of the Andromeda galaxy, our closest galactic neighbour, captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The full image is made up of 411 Hubble images, takes you through a 100 million stars and travels over more than 40,000 light years. Well, a section of it anyway.

Prepare to feel extremely tiny and insignificant (or just the opposite!) as you marvel at this fly-through video created by YouTuber daveachuk and make sure you stick around till the end. Seriously.

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Desert Breath


Located near the Red Sea in El Gouna, Egypt, Desert Breath is an impossibly immense land art installation dug into the sands of the Sahara desert by the D.A.ST. Arteam back in 1997. The artwork was a collaborative effort spanning two years between installation artist Danae Stratou, industrial designer Alexandra Stratou, and architect Stella Constantinides, and was meant as an exploration of infinity against the backdrop of the largest African desert. Covering an area of about 1 million square feet (100,000 square meters) the piece involved the displacement of 280,000 square feet (8,000 square meters) of sand and the creation of a large central pool of water.

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First Photos of One of the Solar System's Craziest Objects

In March 2004, the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft left Earth in pursuit of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Today, more than 10 years and four billion miles later, Rosetta became the first spacecraft in history to rendezvous with a comet. The probe is now soaring through space in tandem with its target—and the view is incredible.

In November, from a projected orbital distance of just 2.5 km, Rosetta will deposit a lander on the comet's surface—all this in preparation for 67P's closest pass of the Sun in more than six years. As it swings around our parent star, the mass of ice and dust will warm, shedding bits of itself along the way; Rosetta—and Philae, the lander—will have unprecedented front row seats to the show.

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Synchronicity

I was at Einstein's the other day having lunch and slowly making my way through Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs. I was at the point in the book where Job was waxing poetic about his love of Bob Dylan's music and how he finally got to meet the man who so profoundly influenced him. I was immediately reminded of my dear friend Beth in Phoenix, who in her younger days actually dated Dylan for an extended period:

Me: "You should've seen my Mom's face when I brought home my first Bob Dylan record."

Beth: "You should've seen my Mom's face when I brought home Bob Dylan."

At that exact moment, one of Dylan's songs (I don't know which one; I recognize his voice but not his complete catalog) started playing over the sound system.

There is a lot about the nature of reality that we simply do not understand—and probably never will.

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Despina, Moon of Neptune

From APOD:
Despina is a tiny moon of Neptune. A mere 148 kilometers across, diminutive Despina was discovered in 1989 in images from the Voyager 2 spacecraft taken during its encounter with the solar system's most distant gas giant planet. But looking through the Voyager 2 data 20 years later, amateur image processor and philosophy professor Ted Stryk discovered something no one had recognized before—images that show the shadow of Despina in transit across Neptune's blue cloud tops. His composite view of Despina and its shadow is composed of four archival frames taken on August 24, 1989, separated by nine minutes. Despina itself has been artificially brightened to make it easier to see. In ancient Greek mythology, Despina is a daughter of Poseidon, the Roman god Neptune.

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Beauty in Darkness

Stars Bursting In The Night Sky

Australian photographer Lincoln Harris' collection Star Trails, surreal swirls in the sky created from a multitude of long-exposure shots and the effect of the Earth's rotation.

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Recipe

For those not wishing to contract salmonella.


Eggless Cookie Dough

(to eat, not to bake)

3/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup butter, softened
1/4 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup milk
1 cup flour
pinch of salt
1/2 cup chocolate chips

Mix together in a bowl, grab a spoon, and put on a movie.

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Spacely Sprockets 2


1956. "General Motors Technical Center, Warren, Michigan. Design Center interior with stair in background. Eero Saarinen, architect."

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Fasten Your Seat Belts

Amazing video of the Space Shuttle during launch, taken with cameras and mics mounted on the solid rocket boosters that propelled the shuttles into space. All the sound is from the actual camera microphones and has not been faked or replaced with foley artist sound.

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Mad Men!

Another wonderful find from Shorpy:


1956. "IBM Manufacturing and Administrative Center, Rochester, Minn. Eero Saarinen, architect." Kodachrome by Balthazar Korab.

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Nom Nom Nom



Deep-Dish Chocolate Chip Cookie for One

Ingredients (1 serving)

  • 1 Tbsp unsalted butter, at room temperature
  • 1/2 Tbsp granulated sugar
  • 1/2 Tbsp packed light brown sugar
  • 1 Tbsp beaten egg (cover & chill remaining beaten egg for tomorrow's cookie cup… you will be making another one!)
  • tiny splash pure vanilla extract
  • 2 1/2 Tbsp flour
  • 1/8 tsp baking soda
  • tiny pinch salt
  • heaping 1 Tbsp chocolate chips

Instructions

In a small ramekin or microwavable cup, combine softened butter and both sugars; stir well with a spoon. Stir in beaten egg and vanilla extract. Stir in flour, baking soda, and salt just until combined. Stir in chocolate chips.

Microwave on high for 35-40 seconds. Let cookie rest at room temperature for about 10 seconds before devouring.

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We Live in Amazing Times

Even if it's exorbitantly expensive at this point…

World renowned electronics manufacturer Philips has announced today that it will be exclusively launching its "Hue" web-enabled lighting system through the Apple Store starting from tomorrow. The new system from Philips offers energy saving LED lights that can replace your existing bulbs and they can then be controlled from your iPhone or iPad.

Building on its innovation capabilities, today Philips unveils hue, the world's smartest web-enabled LED home lighting system. Philips hue signals a new era in home lighting both in the way we think about and experience light in our homes. It allows you to create and control the light using your smartphone or tablet. Bringing endless possibilities to help you get creative and help you personalize your lighting to suit yours and your family's lifestyle, Philips hue is available exclusively from Apple stores from 30th October. A starter pack includes three bulbs that simply screw into your existing lamps, and a bridge that you plug into your home Wi-Fi router. Simply download the hue app to start experiencing light in a completely new way.

Once you have your system installed you can fire up the iPhone or iPad app and customize the lighting in your home to your hearts content. You can change the color of the light, control and monitor lighting of your home from anywhere in the world, set up timers and even use light as your wake up call.

The Philips Hue certainly looks like a very nice way to add some home lighting automation to your home. If you want to get hold of some, you can buy them exclusively through the Apple Store starting October 30th. They will come in a starter kit which includes three bulbs and the interface that needs to be connected to your home router; this starter kit will cost $199. Once you have the starter kit, you can add in extra bulbs at a cost of $59 per bulb. The system can currently support a maximum of 50 bulbs.

Source: Philips