Artsnova Digital Art and Space

For some time now I have been using a particular technique to search the web for pictures of astronomical and planetary objects. That technique relies on the ability to limit searches to specific domains. I also make use of the ability to specify the size of the images I am searching for because I don’t want to see every thumbnail, banner ad, and site logo out there - I am only interested in full size images.

As an example, let’s say that I want to search for any picture that Google associates with the search term “Mars”. Here’s what to do.

1. Go to the Google Advanced Image Search page.
2. In the Find results section, for the option related to all of the words box, enter the word “Mars” without the quotes
3. For Size, click the drop-down arrow for the box and select “large”
4. For Domain, let’s limit the search to the Mars Art Gallery so enter the domain name “marsartgallery.com” without the quotes.
5. Click the Google Search button to execute the search and see the results.

That’s all there is to it. Some of my favorite search terms are nebula, galaxy, planet, exoplanet, messier, and supernova.

Taking a look at the Google Search Box you will see that the search term is:
mars site:marsartgallery.com.

It should be apparent that to switch to a different site, all you need to do is replace the domain name component so if you want to you can skip using the Advanced Image Search by entering the search term directly. Some of my favorite domains to site search on are (including the site keyword):
site:esa.int
site:hubblesite.org
site:apod.nasa.gov
site:observe.arc.nasa.gov
site:ipac.caltech.edu

And don’t forget to make sure that you have the large image option selected.

For a final suggestion, if you want to see all the images available on a site, you can do each of the following searches in sequence:
jpg site:marsartgallery.com
jpeg site:marsartgallery.com
gif site:marsartgallery.com
png site:marsartgallery.com
Note that you can search on only one image file extension at a time, otherwise it does not work.

Happy Searching.

National Space Society Award for Excellence Presented to Jim Plaxco

Well I’ve been home almost a week from the ISDC (International Space Development Conference) and I still haven’t fully caught up. I have quite a store of materials, recordings, and photographs to go through in order to produce some written reviews of some of the presentations I attended.

I arrived in Dallas at noon on Thursday the 24th just ahead of thunderstorms that were to cause massive flight delays and cancellations. I wound up sharing a shuttle bus to the hotel with an author working on a book about space tourism. Arriving at the hotel, I dumped my bags and headed straight off to the afternoon session of the Space Venture Finance Symposium. After sitting through three of the presentations, I ducked out in order to attend the meeting of the NSS Fundraising Committee. While not a member of the committee, I felt obliged to attend in order to report on the financial aspects of the NSS Space Settlement Art Contest and Calendar.

A dinner break and it was back to committee meetings. While I sorely wanted to attend the Space Settlement Advocacy meeting, I felt obliged to attend the meeting of the Web Oversight and Internet Development Committees. These were the two committees I created as chair of a special committee established to identify an alternate solution to the society’s Internet needs. Fortunately our committee was able to implement an all-volunteer system of web site support while procuring complimentary hosting from CyberTeams, producing substantial cost saving for the society. The meeting finally broke up shortly after midnight and that’s when I called it a night.

Friday was the first full day of the conference and I attended too many sessions to cover here. I also got a nice guided tour of the ISDC Space Art Show and Sale which had some very cool space art. Unfortunately I just can’t recall the name of the attractive young lady who so kindly walked me through the show. The Friday night dinner featured science fiction author and scientist Dr. Ben Bova whose presentation I will cover at a later time. Following dinner, which lasted a few hours and included a number of award presentations, I headed back to my room in order to download the photographs I had taken that day and to go over the three presentations I was slated to give on Saturday.

Saturday was more sessions and a busy afternoon as I had my own three presentations to give. Probably the most interesting session of the day was given by General Simon “Pete” Worden, Director of NASA Ames Research Center, who delivered his talk via the virtual community Second Life in which NASA has a presence. Afterwards General Worden appeared from behind the curtain to take questions from both the live audience as well as the audience in Second Life.

Saturday’s Gala Dinner featured Dr. Steve Squyres, Principal Scientist for NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Mission who spoke at length about that mission. The most memorable moment for me was when, during the awards segment that followed Dr. Squyres presentation, I was presented with the National Space Society’s 2007 Award for Excellence (see graphic above) in recognition of my work as the chair of the NSS Space Settlement Art Contest and Calendar Committee.

With my presentations behind me, I took the opportunity to spend Saturday night partying. I stuck it out until after 3:00am before heading back to my room in order to dump the photos I had taken that day to my laptop. Probably the longest conversation I had that evening was with Darel Preble, chair of the Georgia Tech Space Solar Power Institute SSP Workshop. We had an extensive discussion on, you guessed it, space solar power. You can learn more about Darel and hear him interviewed about space solar power on The Space Show.

Sunday came much too quickly. It was another morning of space with Robert Zubrin of the Mars Society opening the day with his Mars Direct presentation. The luncheon speaker that day was Apollo 9 astronaut and B612 Foundation Chairman Rusty Schweickart who spoke about the NEO impact hazard. Earlier Rusty had graciously autographed a 16×20 photo composite I had created from NASA photographs of his Apollo 9 mission. The speaker at that evening’s NSS Awards Dinner was former U.S. Senator and Apollo 17 Mission Scientist Harrison “Jack” Schmitt whose presentation dealt with mining lunar helium-3 as a fuel source for fusion reactors. His book on the subject, Return to the Moon was one of my primary sources for a class I taught on the subject at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago.

Monday morning I opted to attend the three hour Moon Rock and Meteorite Samples Certification Course. I had previously taken this course in 1989 and felt that it was about time that I go through the course again. A good portion of the class was spent doing hands-on activities meant to be done by students in the classroom. I think most people liked making craters the best.

And that is how ISDC went for me. Following the Moon Rock class, it was time to check out and head to the airport. As it was on my arrival, the weather was nasty but I was able to catch an earlier flight by flying standby and was able to depart Dallas before the worst of the storms hit.

It felt good to be back home but am not sure when I will be able to go back through the pages of notes I took, the hours of presentations I recorded, and the hundreds of photographs I took. ISDC may be over but the real challenge of ISDC still awaits me.

Ad Astra, Jim

Today is First Lady Laura Bush’s birthday so Happy Birthday Laura. You are certainly one of the best, if not the best, First Lady’s we’ve had in my memory, which dates back to the Nixon presidency.

One of the good things about the election season is that it brought First Lady Laura Bush to Schaumburg IL, a long way from both Texas and Washington DC. I was fortunate to be able to attend this campaign event which required advance reservations. I arrived a little more than two hours in advance of Mrs. Bush’s arrival and was able to move up to about three rows of people back from the front. It certainly was a long time standing.

This was a campaign event for the congressional campaigns of David McSweeney and Peter Roskam, and the gubernatorial campaign of Judy Baar Topinka. There is a Daily Herald story about the event that you can read to learn more.

Mrs. Bush gave a good stump speech about the various issues that are dominant this election season. Mrs. Bush was preceded by speeches from McSweeney, Roskam, Topinka, and IL state GOP Chairman Andy McKenna. Following her speech, the First Lady took time to walk along the front of the line giving autographs and having her picture taken. While I did get to say hi to her and get her autograph, I now kick myself for not turning over my camera and asking to have our picture taken. For some reason, it just didn’t seem right to me at the time - like too much of an imposition.

And Mrs. Bush: I must say that this is the first time that I have attended an event to see a celebrity who was neither an astronaut nor a scientist so consider yourself to be in exclusive company.

I must add that I am very happy that I had a digital camera for this event, as opposed to my film camera. Many shots were spoiled due to the jostle of the crowd, some out of focus due to movement on my part as well as playing with focus and zoom settings. Knowing that I didn’t have to pay for film, pay for processing, or worry about changing rolls made it possible for me to be much more carefree when it came to taking pictures at the event.

Ad Astra, Jim