Hey - it’s 2009

And I want to say a heartfelt thanks to all my new blogging friends and send each and everyone of you my best for a joyous, peaceful, and prosperous new year.

Thanks for all the great conversations, writing, artwork, and most of all inspiration - I am honored to share this space with you!

I’m not one for resolutions, and I’ve long since gotten over staying up all night and then dozing over the toilet bowl on the first day of the new year, but there is something fresh feeling about putting up a new calendar and taking a moment to pause and think about new directions and adventures.

And on the topic of adventurous feeling things, I wanted to share this NASA image with you. The work these folks are doing is just so cool and new to me.

I pretty much thought antimatter was more or less a Star Trek fantasy, but apparently not.

This is an image of the Bullet Cluster.

And the image is made up of an image from the Chandra x-ray observatory, and optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope, and the Magellan telescope in Chile.

As a digital image person just all that is cool enough to totally wow me, but read the excerpt below the image to find out what these folks are studying. This kind of stuff makes me want to jump on a star and get out there in person.

Man, just beam me up…

In this latest research effort, the Bullet Cluster was used to search for the presence of antimatter leftover from the very early universe. Antimatter is made up of elementary particles that have the same masses as their corresponding matter counterparts — protons, neutrons and electrons — but the opposite charges and magnetic properties.

[via NASA - Image Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/CfA/M.Markevitch et al. Optical: NASA/STScI; Magellan/U.Arizona/D.Clowe et al. ]

May your new year be filled with wonder, delight, and new discoveries.

Looking forward to exchanging more data bits with you in ‘09

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My dad always wanted to work for NASA.

I never really understood why he didn’t. He was beyond smart enough. And driven enough.

And he seemed to want it enough—told me once he would have even mopped the floors just to have been a part of what was going on there in the ’60s.

I don’t know about you, but in my book that is a lot of desire.

Perhaps he never pursued that life because he felt family demands weigh heavily, or had a want to stay in the home town, or grappled with things I can never imagine.

We all make choices. Sometimes they just aren’t very easy to explain.

Regardless, I grew up around all things space. We watched every scrap of televison broadcast on the Apollo missions and Lost in Space and StarTrek were shows we never missed.

As an adult I had the good fortune to visit Cape Kennedy with my dad twice, where he told me more about the different craft and the operation of the place than I could find in any of the written information there.

NASA always and forever reminds me of my dad so it seems perfect to share some NASA images with you on this father’s day weekend.

This is a picture of the Rocky Mesas of Nilosyrtis Mensae on Mars. My dad would have loved this mission. Mars, the planet of endless science fiction and speculation at last being revealed to us in pictures like this.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona iii mars mesas - read more…

iiii

This is a flare from the star EV Lacertae. This star is far smaller (a red dwarf) than our own solar system’s star. And yet this flare is thousands of times more powerful than any thing that our sun has ever emitted. This makes me think of potential and how we never really know what is possible. My dad knew this too. When the docs gave him five or six months, he decided he had other plans and lived another two years.

Image Credit: Casey Reed/NASA iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii EV Lacertae - read more…

iiiiii

So the post today is really just these pictures.

NASA images that prompt me to reflect on my dad.

They make me remeber how he had to let go of some of his dreams to follow other ones, and how he never discouraged me when I tossed away my “good job with lots of potential” to chase after the uncertainty of art in its many forms.

Perhaps my father hoped I had hitched my wagon to a star, or maybe that I’d found my own floors to mop. I’ll never know for sure.

What I hope is that wherever my dad is at the moment, the stars are more beautiful up close, than he ever imagined them to be.

iiiiiii

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There just are no words for this kind of beauty.

Chaos at the Heart of Orion

“NASA’s Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes teamed up to expose the chaos that baby stars are creating 1,500 light years away in a cosmic cloud called the Orion nebula.” more

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI

[via NASA]

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