Artsnova Digital Art and Space

The Tentacled Forest

“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” So said the bard William Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet. But when it comes to giving a work of art a title, the name is important. A name can convey meaning, an idea, an emotion. It can be descriptive or suggestive.

I’ll let you in on a secret. I usually find it much easier to create art than to name it. There are times when I know the name for a piece even before I have finished it. There are other times when the right name comes to me upon completion of the art. But most of the time I just sit back and scratch my head. One thing I refuse to do is cop out and name one of my pieces “Untitled“. I just can’t. If I can’t come up with a name then that image remains in existence only on my computer’s hard drive until such time as I do come up with a name. This is one reason why there is far more art on my computer than on my web site.

When I was working on The Tentacled Forest I was going for a dream-like fantasy forest effect. The trees are too few to constitute a proper forest but I felt that to add more would have detracted from the clarity of the form of the trees that are present.

I completed this piece on June 6 but couldn’t come up with a proper name. Fantasy Forest? Alien Forest? Dream Forest? And there were others but none of them appealed to me. Revisiting the image today, I hit upon the name The Tentacled Forest.

So I give you the latest addition to the Artsnova Abstract Gallery, The Tentacled Forest.

Enjoy, Jim.

Email about the Face on Mars

A few days ago I received the email shown above from a person in Italy. Note that I have slightly cropped the images to fit the space available here. I assume that this email was directed to me because of my previous writings that the so called “Face on Mars” is nothing more than a mesa. In the email I’m not sure if they’re referring to the Face on Mars as a miracle or if the writer is being sarcastic and referring to the subsequent images as miracles of deception. I think the latter based on the reference to the original Viking image as true and the subsequent images as less than true.

Nobody likes having their religion challenged and for those people who believe that the Face on Mars is an artifical structure built by some alien race, these are clearly hard times. Recent imaging by NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey missions, as well as ESA’s Mars Express (see this Astronomy Picture of the Day image), have clearly shown this feature to be nothing more than a naturally formed mesa in a region of Mars (Cydonia Mensae) in which mesas are common. Clearly, believers in the alien artifact religion are hard pressed.

That they are so hard pressed is further evident in how they choose to present relevant imagery. For example, take a look at the image below. The inset image is the original Mars Odyssey THEMIS image of the Face from the email. The main image is the original version from the Mars Odyssey web site found here. It’s clear that the version in the email has had its contrast enhanced and highlights boosted, obliterating detail present in the original image thus making the face look more artificial. Purveyors of this religion rely heavily on the ignorance of their audience.

Mars Odyssey Themis image of the Face on Mars with inset image from email.

Why do I call this belief a religion? Because people still cling to this belief in spite of all evidence to the contrary. Which reminds me of a parallel situation. Over 100 years ago the astronomer Percival Lowell offered a complex and coherent explanation for the linear features that he observed telescopically on the surface of Mars. He claimed that they were actually irrigation canals built by the Martians to irrigate the equatorial regions of their dying planet. Despite mounting evidence that the lines he saw were nothing more than optical illusions, and no additional supporting evidence, Lowell clung to his belief - though for Lowell it was not a religion.

One good thing came about as a result of the email I received. In response to this email, I have just published on my Mars Art Gallery web site an article I had written last year discussing the Face on Mars and the visual perception law known as the Law of Prägnanz. If not for this email, this article would probably have never seen the light of day. The Law of Prägnanz and the Face on Mars is an article that explains why we perceive the face on Mars as a face. So my thanks to the sender of the email as that provided me the motivation to dust off the article and go public with it.

Ad Astra, Jim

The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone

Wow. My last blog post was May 29 about A Day in Washington DC. I’ve certainly been off my blog game of late but I do have a really good series of excuses. First of course was my week at the International Space Development Conference in Washington. I actually thought that I would have time to blog from the conference but that was not the case. Other than the one post mentioned above I was on the go the entire time.

I then had a week back home to play catch up before leaving on a two week vacation. I just had time to create one new piece of digital art, which I’ll write about once I have added it to my web site, and produce three web graphics for the National Space Society Awards Committee based on photographs I had taken at the ISDC.

Then it was off on vacation. We left home in the morning, reached Sioux Falls, South Dakota that afternoon with time to do some sightseeing. Next morning we headed off to our first stop: Badlands National Park. Fortunately we had a reservation for one of the few cabins in the park (the only accommodations in the park). We spent a couple days hiking around there. A very alien looking environment. Bottom line is that the entire Badlands is a variation on a single theme: that being the prolonged effects of erosion on a weak sedimentary structure. For the kids, the highlight seemed to be the prairie dog town.

Following the Badlands our next stop was the town of Keystone which served as our base of operations for our visits to the Black Hills area. While there we visited Mt. Rushmore, Custer State Park, Wind Cave National Park, and Jewel Cave National Monument. I would say that the highlight here was Jewel Cave National Monument. Jewel Cave is much more visually interesting than Wind Cave because water had a role to play in the formation of some of its features. Both caves, but primarily Wind Cave, feature an interesting rock texture pattern called boxwork.

It was then on to Wyoming for the second half of our trip - a visit to Yellowstone National Park. For the visit we stayed in West Yellowstone. I won’t go into detail about our visit but I will say that it is the stinkiest park we ever visited. It didn’t bother me but the sulfur fumes from the various hot springs and geysers did make my youngest son unwell. Two wildlife highlights stand out. One was having practically a front row seat to watching a coyote stalk and make a kill. The second was while stopped to allow a buffalo to cross the road, the animal made a sharp left at the front of the car and paused even with my open driver’s side window a mere couple feet away. I could have easily reached out and given him a pat on the head. Scenically the highlight was the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and its falls. Unfortunately the bulk of the North Rim was closed for reconstruction of both the roadways and hiking paths. The Artists Paintpots was also closed because the week before a woman had fallen through the path and been scalded by the hot waters. So heed those warnings to stay off what appears to be solid ground because you can not know just how thick or thin it is.

All told I collected about 10 gigabytes worth of photographs shooting in raw mode. We arrived home the night of Saturday the 21st. Sunday morning I got up and with a slight feeling of dread fired up the laptop to begin to wade through the email that had been accumulating in my absence. I was rather irritated when I could not access my primary email account, which is hosted by Corecom. Now I never signed on with Corecom but had established my account with Megsinet who were subsequently purchased by Corecom. A call to tech support and I was told that they were migrating servers and that email would not be available until after 8:00am Monday (06/23). Well Monday it still wasn’t available. Another call to tech support was a waste of time. Seems that though they did get the server up, it failed to authenticate requests from desktop clients to access their mailbox. Tuesday the problem continued and worsened: calling intermittently the entire day to two different 800 numbers got me nothing but busy signals. I finally resorted to calling the line to order new service. After waiting what seemed like an hour a person came on. I was told that there were intermittent problems impacting some users. I asked if the problem was as minor as she seemed to indicate then why were both their regular customer technical support and business hosting technical support lines busy the entire day. No good answer other than they couldn’t handle the call volume.

In the end the problem was not resolved until Wednesday the 25th. And this was only after I had gotten through to their tech support, whose two 800 numbers were still continuously busy, via back channels. And here I learned the truth of the matter. First, their email system had been down since the previous Wednesday! Second, my email account was only “fixed” to work with their new server once I was able to get through holdhell and talk to a technician (no call - no fix). The worst part is that once I was able to retrieve my email I discovered that ALL EMAIL from the 20th through the latter part of the day of the 24th and some from the 25th as well has been LOST! Corecom’s handling of this entire fiasco makes the fictional company that Dilbert and Wally work for look like a model of efficiency and competence.

On the up side, Corecom is crediting my account for one month’s service. I confirmed it today - but only after multiple attempts to get through to their still busy support number. Obviously not everyone has had their problems resolved yet.
So until next time, Ad Astra. Jim

Capitol Building, Washington DC

Tuesday night I found myself facing a dilemma. My problem was what to do on Wednesday. I was faced with two radically different alternatives. This was my fourth trip to DC and I had come in two days early so that I could spend the day before the International Space Development Conference sightseeing and photographing - an opportunity I never got to take on my previous three trips.

My plan was to rise early, get tickets to ascend the Washington Monument for a great view of the city, and then head over to the National Academy of Sciences to take in “The Last Iceberg”, an exhibit of photographs by Camille Seaman. After that, more photographing the various national monuments.

Or I could join National Space Society Executive Vice President Greg Allison and visit the offices of several U.S. Senators and Representatives for meetings with aides for the purpose of outlining why the senator/representative should support space in general and full funding for the NASA budget in particular. My mental calculus was this: I could come to D.C. and take photos anytime but how often would I have the opportunity to sit down and speak with legislative staff about the importance of human and robotic space exploration.

The next morning three teams of blitzers met at the Dirksen Building cafeteria for breakfast. Greg Allison, Myrna Coffino, and myself were Team Two. Our first visit was to the office of Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY) to meet with Legislative Aide Ryan Habmleton. We had made it through most of our informal presentation when a fire drill ousted us from the building.

After an hour outside, our team split up in order to make both our appointments. Myrna, who is from New York, headed off to visit with Rep. Carolyn Maloney’s (D-NY) Staff Assistant Linda Forman, and Greg, who is from Alabama, and I, whose family is from Mississippi, headed to Senator Wicker’s (R-MS) office to meet with Legislative Assistant Kelly Mixon. I really enjoyed our meeting with Kelly, who was both gracious (southern charm) and attentive. Good vibes all around

Our teams met back at the cafeteria for lunch and then took off for our afternoon round of visits. Our first visit was with Robert Bovard, Legislative Correspondent for Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA). This was followed by a lengthy visit with Mike Buttry, the Chief of Staff for Senator Hagel (R-NB). Mr. Buttry was the highest ranking individual we met with that day and scored “5’s” from us across the board in our post-meeting review. Mr. Buttry demonstrated that he was well informed on the relevant issues. He even volunteered a fair amount of useful advice for us. This, our last meeting of the day, definitely left us feeling good.

Our teams then met up at the American Restaurant in Union Station to have drinks and dinner and compare notes. All in all, the three teams had generally positive feedback from the staffers we met with, which was encouraging. After that we caught the Metro back to the hotel, ditched our suits and ties, and took on a more casual appearance.

Meeting back in the lobby, we ran into Chris Carberry, the new Executive Director for the Mars Society. Chris, Greg, myself, and Rick Zucker - the mastermind and coordinator of the day’s visit to the Capitol, headed out to McCormick & Schmick’s for drinks and eats - in that order. A round of Guiness later we were ready to order. Having already eaten, I opted for desert - smartly taking Lauren’s advice by ordering her favorite dessert - double baked apple pie with a walnut glaze and cinnamon ice cream. FYI, Loren was our waitress and she did an outstanding job. Later I put Greg on the spot by telling Lauren that Greg would write a poem about her before we left. Not one to back down from a challenge, Greg rose to the occasion and wrote a short poem that impressed Lauren and the rest of us. If only I could remember it, I’d reproduce it here.

And that’s where I’ll end this story of my second day -Wed. May 28 - in Washington D.C.

Ad Astra, Jim

Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger (at right) in 1999.

I was saddened to learn last night of the death earlier in the day of Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger. Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger was one of the last surviving members of the Peenemuende rocket team that came to America after World War II with Dr. Wernher von Braun (Operation Paperclip).

I had the good fortune to meet and speak with Dr. Stuhlinger on a couple occasions over the years. He was very generous in volunteering to mail me typewritten versions of a couple of his presentations so that I could add them to my Astrodigital web site and publish them in the Chicago Society for Space Studies newsletter Spacewatch which I edited at that time.

In addition to having a Ph.D. in physics, Dr. Stuhlinger’s career with NASA included serving as director of the Marshall Space Flight Center space science lab from 1960 to 1968, followed by being the associate director for science from 1968 to 1975, after which he retired from NASA. Dr. Stuhlinger worked on Explorer 1 - America’s first successful satellite, part of which I have been told was built in his garage! Dr. Stuhlinger was also a pioneer in the field of electric propulsion and wrote the book Ion Propulsion for Space Flight. In 2005, the Electric Rocket Propulsion Society awarded him their “Medal for Outstanding Achievement in Electric Propulsion.”

Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger
Born: 19 December 1913 in Niederrimbach, Germany
Died: 25 May 2008 in Huntsville AL, USA

Ad Astra Dr. Stuhlinger

Phoenix Lander First Picture of the Martian Surface

Hurray. The Phoenix Lander has survived Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) to arrive safely on the surface of Mars. The radio signal indicating its success was received at NASA JPL at 4:53:44 p.m. Pacific Time. The signal was relayed from Phoenix to Earth via Mars Odyssey, now in orbit around Mars.

As I write this Phoenix has been on the surface of Mars for almost three and a half hours. Phoenix was launched August 4, 2007 and followed a Type II trajectory to Mars. It has landed in an arctic lowland plain in a vast region known as Vastitas Borealis. The longitude of the Phoenix landing site is 233 degrees East longitude. This lies to the east of the line of longitude on which the volcano Arsia Mons sits. Phoenix’s latitude is 68 degrees North. On Earth this would be in northern Greenland and very close to the Artic Circle.

Phoenix’s prime mission is to last 90 days. Believe it when you are told that this won’t be like the MER missions which have outlived their 90 day mission by years. Right now summer is just starting in the northern hemisphere of Mars and the Sun will be above the horizon all day. But as winter approaches, less and less sunlight will reach the solar arrays and the nights will get colder and colder. And there will come a day when the Sun doesn’t rise and before the winter is over Phoenix could well be buried under a foot or more of dry ice - the Martian version of snow. So this mission will effectively end sometime this November when Mars passes behind the Sun from our perspective and all communications with the red planet are cut off.

So Phoenix will have a short life, but let’s hope that it is a very productive one.

Ad Astra, Jim

P.S. My interview with WBBM radio (780 AM) about the Phoenix mission is to air sometime tomorrow (Monday).  Sometime after airing, the full 30 minute interview will be posted to their web site.

Mars Phoenix Lander

Earlier today I made a trip to the local office of the Daily Herald in order to be interviewed for a WBBM-AM radio (780 on the dial) newscast. The interview was conducted by Steve Grzanich, reporter and co-anchor of the afternoon news at WBBM. For half an hour we talked about the Phoenix lander mission to Mars and its place in the exploration of Mars. We discussed past missions to Mars, current missions to Mars, how we benefit from the study of Mars, and what the prospects are for future human missions to the red planet.

In addition to talking about Mars, I was able to get in brief plugs for the Chicago Society for Space Studies, the National Space Society, and my upcoming presentation on space art at the International Space Development Conference in D.C.

I was also supposed to be interviewed by Julie, a reporter for the Daily Herald, but just as I arrived at the Herald’s office, she was called away on breaking news on the Drew Peterson escapade.

It was a fun interview and the time passed quickly. My long time interest in Mars is largely responsible for my work with the raw image data returned by various Mars missions, beginning with the Viking missions. I’ve been lecturing about the exploration of Mars since 1988 and it was my desire to provide unique images as a part of my presentations that got me started with processing raw image data instead of relying on images released by the NASA public affairs folks Prior to the Internet, the only way to obtain this mission data was by ordering CD’s from the National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC). Now the NASA PDS Imaging Node makes those data files easily accessible to anyone with an Internet connection.

I am told that the interview should air Thursday (tomorrow) afternoon and that the full interview will be available as a podcast in a few days on the WBBM web site. I’ll provide the details once I have them.

Ad Astra, Jim

Context Free Art Example

My favorite aspect of digital art is the seemingly endless possibilities for mental and artistic exploration it provides. For example, I have only just begun to learn how to use Context Free. Context Free is a graphics program that creates an image based on a set of written instructions. These instructions are termed a grammar and consist of rules and parameters. These rules are saved in a Context Free Design Grammar (CFDG) file.

For me, this is reminiscent of the way computer graphics were created back in the early days. Unfortunately I do not recall the name of the programming package I first used to create graphics on an Apple II+ back circa 1982. Having no input device other than the keyboard meant that the only way to create graphics was programmatically.

The colorful geometric figure above was created using Context Free. The program I wrote to create this illustration is shown below.

In brief, the above program works as follows. To begin, the startshape directive tells Context Free the name of the rule to start drawing with. In this case the name of the rule is Art.

The rule Art consists of one statement: an instruction to execute the rule named draw. You will note that the draw statement has two parameters. The hue parameter specifies the color to draw and the value of 120 corresponds to green. The sat parameter specifies the saturation of the color, in this case 50%.

At this point control is passed to the draw rule. The first statement, SQUARE, tells Context Free to draw a square. The parameter b is used to specify brightness and the value of -1 corresponds to black. So a solid black square is drawn. The second statement, SQUARE, tells the program to draw another square. In this case there are two parameters. The s parameter is used to specify the size percentage. In this case .995 tells Context Free to draw this square at 99.5 percent the size of the last square drawn. The parameter b, used to specify brightness, is given the value of 1 which corresponds to white. So a solid green square is drawn. If this were the last statement, then the result would be a simple solid green square (from the second SQUARE statement) with a black border (from the first SQUARE statement).

The magic happens in the final statement. The draw rule is directed to execute the draw rule. When a statement or function calls itself, this is referred to as recursion. The beauty is that in this new call to the draw rule we can modify the initial drawing conditions. The r parameter tells Context Free that the first thing it should do is to rotate the drawing angle by the number of degrees specified, in this case 30. The s parameter instructs Context Free to reduce the size of whatever is to be drawn to 99.5 percent of what was drawn last. Finally, the hue parameter says to increment the value of the hue by 1.

The draw rule is then executed using these new initial conditions. And when the statement to call the draw rule again is encountered, the initial conditions are again altered by the parameters. And again and again and again. The draw rule will be called over and over until the size of what is being drawn shrinks down to nothing. When this last draw is executed, it returns control to the draw that called it and so on all the way back up the chain until control is finally returned to the Art rule.

Writing programs for Context Free can give you a nice mental workout. The program shown above is a very simple one that just scratches the surface of what is possible. You really should give this software a try. And I’ve saved the best for last: the Context Free software is free. You can download a copy for yourself from the Context Free web site.

Go ahead - give it a try. Jim

Trouvelot astronomical illustration: Sonne III

Earlier this evening while doing research for my upcoming presentation on space art at the International Space Development Conference (see Art and the Promotion of Space Exploration), I was looking for information about Étienne Trouvelot, an astronomical artist active during the 1870’s. Quite to my surprise, I found a small gallery of his art at the New York Public Library web site. The 15 images are all from his book The Trouvelot astronomical drawings published in 1881 by Scribner’s Sons.

Of the images contained in the gallery, my two favorites are Mare Humorum, from a lunar study made in 1875, and The planet Mars, drawn based on observations from September 3, 1877. To view these and the rest of the images, visit New York Public Library’s Trouvelot Astronomical Drawings gallery.

P.S. Trouvelot is perhaps more well known as being the individual responsible for the accidental introduction of the gypsy moth to North America.

Ad Astra, Jim

Astronomy Day

Yesterday was Astronomy Day. I had been asked to speak at the Astronomy Day event at Harper College in Palatine IL. My presentation was The Universe According to Monty Python in which I spend an hour explaining the lyrics of the two minute long Galaxy Song which was featured in the movie The Meaning of Life.

I must say that for a bunch of comedians they did a pretty good job of getting their astronomy right but they did have professional help. During the course of my talk lots of big numbers get thrown around. As a rule the best laugh comes with my follow up to the line about the sun being the source of all our power where I segue into an explanation of nucleosynthesis. Whereas Carl Sagan looked at the situation through rose colored glasses when he said that we’re all made of “starstuff”, I level with the audience and tell them the truth: that we’re all nothing more than nuclear waste. Folks really seem to like hearing this.

Also, as a rule, people do not raise questions about the astronomical aspects of my talk but do ask questions when the subject turns to cosmology and relativity. To me this is only natural as those concepts are more alien to our everyday experiences and touch on the very nature of the universe.

For contrast, this Tuesday I’ll be giving a talk to all the third graders at a local grade school. My talk is The Solar System in 3D and the kids get to wear geeky red-blue anaglyph glasses. Believe it or not, third graders are a great audience. They are very curious and not at all afraid to ask questions.

Ad Astra, Jim