Happy Valentine’s Day and Happy Lunar New Year, Spirit! Here are some of our imaginings about how you look as a station!

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Silence at Troy - Spirit's Next Million Years from Emmanuel Gaffard

There are six secrets hidden in this image. Emmanuel says: “Some are Mars exploration related. Kind of. Can you find them?” (I’ve found one so far … he sent me the answers, but I haven’t opened that file yet.) If you want the answers, comment below and I’ll e-mail them to you.

Also of note – as this is pixel-art, the display, zoom, and rendering are important. See below* for extensive detail, or visit PixelJoint.com to increase your exposure to the medium. The original size of Silence at Troy is available here.

Spirit on Mars - Gary Kezele

This entry is from Gary Kezele, accomplished artist and astronomy-visualizer. Bear with us while we get a better scan of this image, but for now you can see a decent version of Gary’s submission! Please click to see it in more detail.

Both these entries show amazing attention to detail – and you can tell they looked closely at the photos of Spirit’s location.

Hobby Entries

From @MamaJoules come two model entries – one from each son. I love them both, and bet that it was a lot of fun to build rovers out of Legos and then try to position them just right in the “sand.” :)

Spirit - by Kerm, 8

The camera mast is great, there are lots of fun details, and the flag is a nice touch too!

Spirit - by Little Brother, 4

Once again, the camera mast is in evidence, and the rover is just like Spirit: it has six wheels (I wonder if all of them work on this model).

Thanks to everyone who submitted – I’ll be sending you all some fun NASA postcards. :) I’ll also pass these along to as much of the Spirit team as I can.

More

These were not submissions, and you’ve seen them before, but I had to include them in this post because I thought you’d enjoy them.

Spirit Embedded at Troy Credit: Keith Enevoldsen

Image from Stuart Atkinson

Go see more of Stuart’s Mars Art.

[*Pixel Art]()

Emmanuel has sent these details about viewing pixel art, which I found fascinating.

Pixel-art makes for small images and files. They should ideally be viewed at 200%, 300% max. You should be able to just see the pixels without them being overwhelming.
Displaying pieces at 100% makes them look very small, and the pixels are lost on good monitors.

Using the browser zoom is not an option! All current browsers use ‘bilinear filtering’ for zooming images (and most image viewing software too), the result is horribly blurry on pixel-art (you might have noticed this if you browsed the Pixeljoint gallery and used the zoom function. However, from Firefox 3.6, websites can opt for an old-fashioned unfiltered zoom function. This is not something the user can do, it’s only a website-side option. So if you visited Pixeljoint using Fx 3.6, you didn’t notice any problem.

You should note, I did not do anything website-side to enable this function in Firefox. All his images are displayed exactly at the resolution I got from him though. Clicking the main image takes you to his 300% zoom version.

Want More?

The Mars Exploration Program at JPL

Thanks all! Let’s do it again sometime. Thanks to the NASA Solar System Ambassadors Program for the support.

~ A l i c e !

Update: This is the first event I’m officially hosting as one of NASA’s volunteer Solar System Ambassadors!

Well, Spirit is now a station at Troy rather than a rover somewhere south of Mars’ equator. Time to have some fun, while the drivers try to back her into the perfect parked position to get Sun on those solar panels!

Spirit Embedded at Troy

I know there’s lots of you artists out there itching to do some science illustration. We don’t have cameras that can show us what it looks like for Spirit to be stuck. Odd, isn’t it? There are what 6? 7? cameras onboard Spirit, and yet, that’s just the problem, they are all ON BOARD Spirit. We can see bits of her, but not the her whole body.

So, draw, photoshop, paint, contstruct a picture of Sprit at her new home and send it on over here.

Skill Level

This competition is for kids and adults. Entries will be divided by me into “professionalish artists” and “doodling around and having fun artists.” There will be winners in both categories. For instance, if you’re really good at photoshop, but you just do it on your own time you’ll probably get put in the “professionalish” category. If you’re 3 and just learning to hold a pencil (hopefully your parents will help you label your drawing so everyone knows what’s what) you’ll be in the “doodling around” category.

Rules

Submit digitally in a web-ready format to my e-mail address alices astro info at gmail dot com (all one word, make that at an @ etc). File should be high enough quality to print. If you’d like to submit on paper e-mail me and I’ll give you an address.

I’m making the choices. I’ll be fair.

Deadline: February 13 – Let’s put them up on Valentine’s day and show Spirit’s rover team that we love them!

Prizes?

Everyone

1. A copy of your picture will be displayed somewhere interesting, where lots of people can see it!
2. (Until i run out) – Lenticular postcards from NASA (oooh! pretty)
3. A digital copy will be shared with NASA to show the Spirit drivers how much we appreciate their hard work.

Featured “Winners”

(You are all winners, just for participating) but there will be one chosen from each category

1. A very awesome  lenticular postcard from NASA.
2. A copy of your picture will be displayed on this blog.
3. Got a suggestion that would be meaningful to you and wouldn’t cost me much? I’m listening!

Liability

If you are under 18, please sign your piece with your first name only, and have your parents send me a message saying it is okay for me to post your picture and your first name.

~ A l i c e !

Sunday mornings I enjoy playing the NPR’s puzzler with my family. I thought you might enjoy a puzzle/mindgame too.

It was late one December, and I was out for a walk with my family. The full moon was rising. It was rising almost due Northeast. Why?

This puzzle helped me solidify my understanding of the celestial sphere, so if you already completely understand the celestial sphere it might not be much of a puzzle – but if you’re still learning about it, figuring out this puzzle could be a turning point for you.

I’ll leave moderated comments on for this post: if you leave the answer I won’t approve the comment, but I’ll e-mail you a reply. You are welcome to leave further questions in the comments as well, but hints will only come to you via e-mail, I will not post more hints here.

Also, there are two Carnivals of Space for you to check out:

109, hosted by Discovery Space

110, hosted by Kentucky Space

~ A l i c e !

click! Photography Changes Everything is an online exhibit put on by the Smithsonian, and they’re looking to celebrate the International Year of Astronomy with us!

If you like photography and you like writing you might like to submit a photo and a short story.

This month’s focus: Seeing Other Worlds

Submit a photo showing how photography influences our ability to see ‘unseen’ or unfamiliar worlds to become part of this month’s focus, Seeing Other Worlds.

Some things to consider: How can photography help us see things that would otherwise go unnoticed in our everyday lives? How does micro- and macro- photography (e.g. from microscopic bacteria to galaxies far beyond the earth) change our perception of the world and our place in it? How do new imaging technologies and software (e.g. MRI’s, CAT scans, Google Earth, etc.) change what we’re able or want to see? How does photography shape awareness and shape our perception of other communities, cultures and lifestyles?

I can’t find a deadline, and I’ll bet that’s because the exhibit goes on all year, but with different themes at different times.

It’s an interesting exhibit – take a look around.

~ A l i c e !

P.S. I promise to have an astronomy post for you soon – I’m working on putting together an overview of the new sky.

For those of you who wanted to use my logo to link to me – I dropped a slightly more manageable version at the bottom of the left-hand column. It should also show up as a choice when sharing links to my site through facebook and the like.

Now don’t go abusing this and making it look like I support things I don’t!

~ A l i c e !

It is currently the International Year of Astronomy and Pacific Science Center is embarking on a project with our high school interns this summer to create posters of current astronomers for display at Pacific Science Center and distribution to science teachers this fall. The detailed project description is below.

We have the interns, the cameras, the plan and now all we need is some astronomers! This is where I need your help.

Do you know any scientists who work in astronomy-related fields? Any astronomers? Astrophysicists? Aerospace engineers? Grad students in planetary geology? All of these “count” as scientists for this project – any field that’s even remotely related to astronomy is great for us and any “level” of scientist, from grad student, to post-doc, to professor, to a person who applies these sciences in industry. We would prefer if these people are in the greater Seattle area, or are at least visiting Seattle sometime this summer. We are especially looking for minorities (of all kinds) in the field of astronomy.

We’re hoping to put together about 25 posters that include a photograph taken by the interns and some short biographical information about each scientist: current projects, hobbies, etc. We would love to meet more than 25 scientists so we have lots of choices for the posters.

The photography sessions and interviews will take place during the summer (end of June through early August 2009), and should only take about an hour.

If you know of anyone who would be willing to participate or help in other ways, please send me their contact information or forward this message on to them.

Project Description Modern Scientists: Everyone Knows What a Scientist Looks Like

Children are inspired to follow career paths when they can imagine themselves there. Seeing pictures of adult individuals who look like them working in a given career can provide this spark to children’s imaginations. As a teaher it is difficult to decorate a classroom with posters of scientists who look like today’s students. Most (though not all) of the current available posters of scientists are of Einstein, and scientists who look like Einstein. This is not representative of the current face of science.

To help change this, Pacific Science Center will host a photography exhibit: photographs of real, current scientists from all races, genders, beliefs, and walks of life. Photos will be taken and short biographies written by interns from Pacific Science Center’s youth development program.
We plan to make the photographs from this exhibit available to teachers for use in their classrooms, in addition to being displayed at Pacific Science Center during the International Year of Astronomy.

The objectives of this project are to fill a need for representative photographs of scientists in the world community and to meet two of the goals of International Year of Astronomy: to provide a modern image of science and scientists, and to improve the gender-balanced representation of scientists at all levels and promote greater involvement by underrepresented minorities in scientific and engineering careers.

Thank you,

~ A l i c e !
alicesastroinfo (a) gmail.com

Life’s boring without Discovery!

P.S. Don’t miss this week’s Carnival – over at cheapastro – and I’m in it for the Mars April Fools post!

Let it be known that Kevin R. Grazier is a complete geek. He was the first to solve my Twittered/Facebooked riddle:

68 74 74 70 3a 2f 2f 74 69 6e 79 75 72 6c 2e 63 6f 6d 2f 66 65 62 36 62 64 61 79

He won a recipe of my choosing out of my collected recipes. Because.

(What? You wanted one too? Friend me and be on the lookout for geektastic insanity! Sometimes anyway. Especially while I’m grading. And they won’t be as bad as that one, I just happened to be inspired.)

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Well, you probably knew he was a geek. Google him if you don’t know why you should know he’s a geek.

Hey … do you like Alice’s Astro Info?

Maybe you’d like to nominate me for Best New Weblog of 2008?

And yes, I have older archives than that, but I started this blog at ASP in June of 2008 – the archives are just old stuff I used to write and print out for staff at Pacific Science Center. I transferred them here for your perusal.

My Dad!

Yay! She’s so cute!

And if you look closely – those planets are pretty darn cool!

The deadline is approaching for my icon competition! In fact … it’s tomorrow!