DollsArtCats

With lightning :D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nszu4jKMldI Want more? Take this brief tour of Proxima Centauri, possibly our nearest exoplanet: https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=VYDucv9zqxk Mark Garlick writes about Proxima: Proxima Centauri has been in the media a lot lately. This tiny red dwarf - only 1/7 the diameter of the Sun - is the closest star outside the Solar System, at 4.25 light-years. What's so special about it? Well, it's got a planet in orbit around it dubbed, unceremoniously, Proxima b. The media has been calling this an 'Earth-like' planet but that's a misnomer. What they mean is terrestrial - it's made of rocky and metal, like the Earth, not a fluid like say Jupiter. But it could easily be as airless as Mercury or as sterile and stifling as Venus. Personally, I think it's likely to have some sort of atmosphere. It's heavier and bigger than the Earth, so it has the gravity to retain heavy gases, unlike Mercury and Mars. It ...

Many years ago (I won't tell you how many) I was talking with Ron Miller at a Balticon and he said "You should join the IAAA (the International Association of Astronomical Artists) because... Mars needs women." This was because at the time there were just a handful of women members, though that has changed a lot in this century. At the time I just knew Ron as, believe it or not, a "Babe Artist" --because he did these great pinup girls for the conventions and they were very popular. So I wasn't at all shy about talking with him about art, and we had fun conversations, and because I figured any invitation to a professional art group was worth following up on, I joined. And it's been pretty great. Of course had I know that Ron Miller was one of the concept artists for Dune and Total Recall, the author of over 50 books, and a legendary space artist, I might have been a little more reluctant to chat with him. Or maybe not--he's a very amiable guy. In...

My friend Joy Day did a painting (with help from a cat, shown in pix) of the final few feet of Curiosity's descent (at least the hoped-for descent). Joy's Blog Post Including Glass Spaceships and Cupcakes The illustration above is from one of the Mars Orbiters, credited to NASA, and it's sand dunes (barchans) in grayscale. Here is Curiosity in detail (note the person standing in back; Curiosity is the size of a large car). Photo is from Nasa/JPL via the Atlantic from a series back in November 2011.