Artsnova Digital Art and Space

Photoshop FITS Liberator screen shot

A new version of the free ESA/ESO/NASA FITS Liberator plugin for Photoshop was released earlier this month. This plugin makes it possible to open FITS files with Photoshop. For you Photoshop users who are not familiar with FITS, the Flexible Image Transport System is the standard file format for astronomical data, like that of the Hubble Space Telescope for example. For more FITS information visit my Making Astronomical Art with your PC Resources page which I created for students in the astronomical art class I taught at the Adler Planetarium.

According to the release notes, the following enhancements are in this new release:

1. Universal Binary for Mac allows native CS3 operation on Intel-based systems
2. Flip image checkbox allows image orientation to be selected on import
3. Stretch Root functions now operate antisymmetrically about x=0
4. Version 1.1 of the Astronomy Visualization Metadata (AVM) standard is fully supported. For more information see http://www.virtualastronomy.org
5. Improvements to importing coordinate metadata from the FITS header

I went to the version 2.2 download page and downloaded this new version. There is also a Photoshop action called Colour_composite.atn that can be downloaded. This action automates the production of color images from the individual RGB grayscale layers. I’ve never used their action preferring to use one I created myself. I installed the plugin without difficulty. On opening a FITS file (M27 for the curious among you) I observed that the main dialog for this new version was essentially the same with the only modifications being to the Stretch Function dialog (item 3 in the list above) and the addition of a Flip Image option (item 2 in the list above).

You can learn more about the plug-in, how to use, and even get some sample FITS files from the ESA/ESO/NASA Photoshop FITS Liberator Home Page.

Ad Astra, Jim

The Apollo 11 mission patch

The Challenger Center is hosting a Student Art Contest in support of space tourist Richard Garriott’s upcoming space flight. Richard is best known as the creator of the massive multi-player online game Ultima. I’ve never met Richard but I have met his father Owen Garriott who first flew in space on a Skylab mission. Owen’s second and last trip into space was in 1983 on the Spacelab-1 mission.

We’ve come a long way since then because Richard Garriott will be going into space as a tourist. While Richard is not the first space tourist, he will be the first person to travel to space whose father also traveled to space. Set to depart October 12, 2008, Richard will have tourist class accommodations on the less than roomy Russian Soyuz. His final destination is the uxorious International Space Station Resort located in low Earth orbit. His one week vacation is said to cost around $30 million. It’s grand to be witness to the birth of a new industry - space tourism. I only wish that it had happened sooner. For a lower cost alternative trip to space, I recommend one of the suborbital flights to be offered by Virgin Galactic. For more information about the space flight of Richard Garriott, check out Richard Garriott’s Space Mission web site.

The Challenger Center’s involvement is that Garriott will be working with classes at the fifty Challenger Learning Centers around the world as a part of a “Garriott Science Challenge” program. Science related classes will be conducted as a part of the program before, during, and after Richard’s trip to ISS.

In conjunction with the “Garriott Science Challenge”, the Challenger Center is conducting a Student Art Contest. The objective of the contest is for students to submit designs for a space patch. The contest, which was announced March 8, has a deadline of April 18. For contest rules and to enter the contest, see Challenger Center Student Art Contest Rules and Submission Form. Designs already submitted can be viewed at Garriott Challenge Student Design Gallery. Note that at the time of this post, no entries have been submitted.

Ad Astra, Jim

The Doomed Diskettes

I recently undertook the Herculean task of going through all my diskettes, moving their contents onto my hard drive if worth keeping and then disposing of them. I had been pretty good about backing up data files and program installations to the extent that over the years I had accumulated in excess of 1800 diskettes. I haven’t actually used diskettes for several years now, all of which were created on old PCs. Going back through these diskettes was like going through a dust laden trunk from the attic. The worst part of going through all my diskettes was that the data transfer rate was agonizingly slow. You get used to the speed of CDs and USB memory sticks and then you pop in a diskette and drum your fingers as you wait.

This was not my first experience with migrating to a new media. Recall that 3.5 inch diskettes were preceded by 5.25 inch diskettes. Try today to find a disk drive able to read those! But that transition was very simple given that those diskettes (at least the ones I had) only held 720 kilobytes of data and I didn’t have very many of them. That was a piece of cake migration. This was different: 1800 diskettes able to hold 1.44 megabytes of data each. Not only did I have an order of magnitude difference in the number of diskettes but each diskette held twice as much information as their predecessors.

Amongst my old disks I did find quite a few surprises. The best gem was a diskette containing the source code and executable for the classic computer game Colossal Cave. I can remember playing this text-based adventure game in college - accessing the host system it was on over my 110 baud modem. If memory serves me correctly, this game was the original computer Adventure game.

Some of the other software I came across included:

• CorelDraw version 2 (1991)
• Windows 3.0 (1990)
• PhotoFinish 1.0 by WordStar (1991)

The oldest software I found was IBM DisplayWrite 4 dated 1986. DisplayWrite was IBM’s first word processing software for the PC and an abomination it was. Rather than use it at work, I went out and bought a copy of Samna’s Ami Pro which was later purchased by Lotus and became Word Pro. I also found a diskette of software and references to BBS’ (Bulletin Board System). BBS’ were computer systems that you would dial into with your modem - the only way to fly in those pre-Internet days. Most of the BBS’ I wanted to connect to were a long distance phone call away and this was back in the days when long distance calls weren’t cheap.

The oldest data files dated back to 1989 and consisted of tables of data on near Earth asteroids. I also found backup copies of all the issues of Spacewatch and PSF News from the time when I was the editor of those publications.

At the finish of the project, the stacks of diskettes to toss numbered in excess of 1,700. I kept about 70 diskettes containing software, system utilities, etc. and another 20 blank diskettes. I next went through the files I had copied to my hard drive more closely, deleting those I considered either unimportant or redundant. At the conclusion of my project, I had just over 180 megabytes worth of files. It’s remarkable to think that of the files contained on over 1,700 diskettes, I was able to write all those I kept to a single CD with room to spare.

It’s even more remarkable to consider the great strides that have been made in data storage. In the early 1980’s diskettes could hold only 100 kilobytes of data. Today I have a portable USB hard drive that fits in my pocket and holds 250 gigabytes of data. Measured in terms of my 3.5 inch 1.44 megabyte diskettes, that’s the equivalent of 177,777 diskettes! (See Math Note 1 below) Here is another analogy: if each of my 1.44 megabyte diskettes had been filled to capacity, then my entire collection could have been written to four CDs or just one DVD.

Just as work grows to fill the available time, so to do files grow to fill the available space. When I started working with graphics files some 20 years ago, the files were small enough so that a number of them could fit on a single diskette. Today the size of my graphics files has grown to the extent that some consume the bulk of a single CD. And liberal use of a digital camera means that I now have tens of gigabytes of RAW files to back up. Now we have music and videos as well. At present I have in excess of 20 gigabytes worth of MP3 files and I expect that number to continue to grow. And there is every reason to believe that this trend will continue.

What does this all mean? The continued evolution of data storage technology means that the medium we save our files on today will not be accessible in the future. Combine this with our ability to save files of ever larger size in ever larger quantities. The bottom line is the next migration from CDs and DVDs to their successor could be a real nightmare - a task too hard even for Hercules.

Happy Computing, Jim

Math Note 1: Okay so I have a portable USB hard drive that holds 250 gigabytes which works out to be equal to the storage capacity of 177,777 3.5 inch diskettes. The picture at the top of this post is of a pile of something over 1,700 diskettes. That pile measures about 30 inches long by 14 inches wide and 13 inches tall. So a 5,460 cubic inch volume of space can hold 1,700 diskettes. Assuming the same degree of packing, it would take 570,980 cubic inches of space to hold 177,777 diskettes. That’s 330 cubic feet or a space that is approximately 7 feet long by 7 feet wide by 7 feet tall!. Imagine all that squeezed into a space that fits in my pocket.

Abstract Experiment in Rotation

I’m back from a weekend of Capricon. Unfortunately I was only able to spend Saturday morning at the con as my wife had to work and my oldest son was home sick. The only presentation I attended was Bryan Palaszewski’s Moonbases: Not For The Weak Minded Pirate. The first half was mostly devoted to discussing the Apollo lunar program and the second half dealt with moon base designs.

Following Bryan’s program I headed off to the Art Show where the first person I saw was one of my favorite ladies of SF, Lori, who was running this year’s art show. I also ran into friend and space artist Tom Peters who had some art in the show. We only had a few minutes to talk before he and his wife had to head off. I took this, my one opportunity, to walk through the art show and look at the art on display. Much of the art was small pencil drawings. The most popular themes seemed to be cats and dragons. One of the ladies working the show told me that “ninety percent of science fiction fans love cats.” In fact the only art on which I observed bids had cats, dragons, or both as the subject. Unfortunately for me I don’t do either dragons or cats. Tom had some space exploration art in the show - the only such art I saw. It seems to me that over the years space ships and astronauts have been on the decline in the local SF art shows. The only two pieces of astronomical art were my own. The most impressive piece in the show was a very large recreation of primitive cave art. It was wonderfully done and I lingered over it far longer than any other piece in the show.

Sunday was a hectic day. I arrived early so that I could begin the process of packing up my art. Fortunately I was able to get into the show area (the doors didn’t officially open till 10:00am) and got my unsold art packed up.

Programming began at 10:00am and I was on for my presentation Imaging Mars which was illustrated with my own Mars images. A good portion of my presentation was actually a tutorial on how people could access the raw Mars mission data for themselves and create their own Martian artwork.

I ran my presentation right up to the hour mark and had to make a mad dash to get to my panel on Podcasting. This panel had very much of a tutorial feel to it in that I and my fellow panelists spent most of our time discussing the how-to aspects of podcasting.

Following the end of the podcasting panel, I had one hour in which to go through the art check out process, get my art into the car, and grab a quick bite of lunch before heading off for my last presentation.

The last hour of programming for Capricon began at 2:00pm and I was surprised to see a nice sized audience for my Space Solar Power for Earth presentation wherein I explain the concept of space solar power and how it benefits both humanity and the environment. Note that the best resource for papers and studies dealing with space solar power is the NSS Space Solar Power Library.

And with that I was out the door feeling that first tickle in my throat that told me that I was probably going to come down with the same bug that caused my son to miss three days of school. Well, better to be sick after a con than before.

Ad Astra, Jim

Femme Fatale digital painting

I returned earlier this evening from the Capricon Science Fiction Convention which this year has pirates as its theme. Back in January I sent in three programming ideas to the Capricon folks for their consideration. Little did I suspect that they would choose to accept all three. I gave the first of my three presentations today. The Universe According to Monty Python is a presentation I created that provides an analysis of the planetary, astronomical, and cosmological statements made in Monty Python’s The Galaxy Song. It’s amazing that one can spend an entire hour explaining the meaning behind the lyrics of a two minute song.

I actually showed up at Capricon on Thursday in order to set up my art for the art show. I decided to limit myself to six works. The newest of the six is Femme Fatale which I’ve used to illustrate this entry. The difficult part was in deciding just what to bring and what to leave behind.

Saturday I am totally off the hook so can roam as I please. However it will be a busy Sunday with my giving two more presentations and sitting in on one panel. My lead off presentation is Imaging Mars in which I provide an introduction to the image processing associated with Mars mission data and an exploration of Martian geology using imagery from the Viking and Mars Global Surveyor missions to Mars. This is immediately followed by the panel Podcasting where we will discuss the technical aspects of creating and syndicating podcasts. Personally I think that podcasts may be on the way out. Given that the computer has a built in screen, that webcams are cheap, and that more and more people have high speed internet access, I predict that videocasting will grow in popularity and that audio podcasting will decline in relative terms. The one saving grace for podcasting is that those MP3 files can easily be loaded into people’s MP3 players and listened to in any kind of setting.

An hour break for lunch and then it’s off to give my presentation on Solar Power from Space for Earth which explores the idea of using a system of space-based Solar Power Satellites to meet the large increases in energy demand resulting from increasing world population and per capita energy consumption.

The Art. The piece that I have used to illustrate this post is titled Femme Fatale. It is a freehand digital painting I created using Photoshop and a custom brush I created for use with my Wacom tablet. I was quite pleased with the result and my only regret is that I decided to create this as an 11 by 14 inch painting. I now wish that I had chosen a larger size. I will be adding this piece to the Artsnova Art Gallery once I create a separate gallery to hold portraiture.

If you’re attending Capricon, be sure to check out the art show and my art.

Ad Astra, Jim

Figure 1. Viking 1 Lander color view of the martian surface.
Left: Mars as NASA shows it.
Right: Mars as Hoagland and company believe it to be using Photoshop Auto Levels.

The followers of Hoagland are at it again. They are still claiming that NASA is faking the colors of Mars - giving it a reddish sky when, according to them, the martian sky is really blue.

Quoting from their article posted 01/17/2008: “NASA has deliberately altered the colors of the images to make the Martian sky appear an absurd “Technicolor red,” when in fact all the evidence clearly shows that the true color of the Martian sky is (and must be) blue - just as it is here on Earth. In fact, when we used a simple color correction tool in Photoshop called the Auto Levels tool, Mars came out looking as Carl Sagan described it after the first Viking images in 1976 - it looked like Arizona.” Note that I am not including a link to the web site as the last thing I want to do is boost their standings in the search engines.

To illustrate what they are talking about, I went to the NASA JPL Photojournal web site and downloaded the same Viking image shown in conjunction with their story - see Figure 1 above. In Photoshop I duplicated the background layer and applied the Auto Levels command to that layer. I then cropped and downsized the image for display here. The left half of Figure 1 is Mars as shown on the NASA JPL web site. The right half has had Photoshop’s auto levels applied - resulting in a lovely blue sky. But is that really what the Martian sky looks like? Hoagland and his followers would have you believe that NASA, JPL (which is staffed and managed by the California Institute of Technology) and planetary scientists around the world are all part of a vast conspiracy that does not want us to know that the martian sky is blue. And since I am here to debunk Hoagland and company’s claims, I too must be part of that conspiracy. Cool! I’ve never been part of a conspiracy before - other than that age old parental conspiracy to convince their children that there really is a Santa Claus.

What about their claim that Auto Levels is a color correction tool? From the Photoshop Help description of the Auto Levels command: “The Auto Levels command automatically adjusts the black point and white point in an image. This clips a portion of the shadows and highlights in each channel and maps the lightest and darkest pixels in each color channel to pure white (level 255) and pure black (level 0). The intermediate pixel values are redistributed proportionately. As a result, using Auto Levels increases the contrast in an image because the pixel values are expanded (as opposed to being compressed, as in lower contrast images). Because Auto Levels adjusts each color channel individually, it may remove color or introduce color casts. Auto Levels gives good results in certain images with an average distribution of pixel values that need a simple increase in contrast.“

So Auto Levels is not a color correction tool but a contrast enhancement tool that in certain situations may introduce a color cast. Note the qualifications that Auto Levels can give good results in some images and that the quality of those results is purely dependent on the distribution of pixel values. Pixel values is a reference to the luminance of a pixel - how dark or bright it is.

Back to Photoshop, lets review one more time what Auto Levels does. For each of the color channels - red, green, blue - Auto Levels takes the lightest pixel value in the channel and remaps it to white, takes the darkest pixel value and remaps it to black, and then stretches out everything in between. Now the consequence of this is that the brightest red, green, and blue pixels will now combine to form white because they have all been arbitrarily set to a value of 255.

Figure 2. Digital photograph of an Arizona sunset

Let’s take a planet Earth example. Figure 2 is a photograph of an Arizona sunset that I took. On the left is the unmodified half of the photograph and on the right is the half as altered by the Auto Levels command. Why the large difference?

Figure 3. The Photoshop histograms for the blue channel of the Arizona sunset: before and after application of the Auto Levels command.

The histogram in figure 3 reveals what happened to the image. The histogram shows the distribution of luminance values for the blue channel before and after the application of Auto Levels. As you can see Auto Levels has significantly altered the distribution of luminance in the blue channel.

Now the question is which of these two images is a more accurate reflection of reality? Since I was there taking the photograph this is an easy question to answer. Auto Levels has both lightened the image and introduced a significant blue color cast and is not an accurate reflection of the sunset that I personally witnessed.

In closing, the claim that NASA, and the rest of the planetary science community, are lying about the true color of Mars and that the Photoshop Auto Levels command provides supporting evidence is baseless and without merit.

Ad Astra, Jim

The Artsnova Web Site

At long last I am finally launching the Artsnova web site. The Artsnova blog dates back to October 2006 and I have been working on developing the Artsnova web site since that time. However, it seemed that other projects always took a higher priority and my work on the site was sporadic at best.

The purpose of the Artsnova web site is to display and market my digital art. At this point I have only 18 pieces on display in four galleries. The artwork is organized into galleries based on subject.

The Abstract Gallery is not really accurately defined since it contains not only purely abstract forms but also some rather interpretive representational art.

The Nature Gallery consists of art whose theme is the natural world. Landscapes, botanicals, and life - both photographic and digitally painted - all illustrating different aspects of our natural world are to be found here.

Since childhood, I have had a strong interest in astronomy and space exploration. The Space Gallery is home to my astronomical and space art. At present, only astronomical art is on display.

The Technology Gallery features art whose subject is the technological creations of man. Whereas luddites curse technology, I praise technology for the many benefits humanity derives from it.

In the future I expect to add a Portrait Gallery to the collection. I also hope to find the time to make regular additions to the existing galleries.

Ad Astra, Jim

After the Storm: Grand Prize Winner
used with artist’s permission

The winners of the National Space Society Space Settlement Art Contest have just been announced. As one of the five judges for the contest, my job was to vote on the best 12 works of space art out of the 69 submitted.

My fellow judges for the contest included space artist Don Davis, my friend and fellow space artist David Robinson, the Chair of the NSS Space Settlement Calendar Committee Bart Leahy, and Loretta Hidalgo-Whitesides, Executive Director of Yuri’s Night.

There were two rounds of judging. The first round consisted of voting for the grand prize image, a best in category image for each of the contest categories: Orbital Settlement, Lunar Settlement, Martian Settlement, and Asteroid Settlement; and voting for another 7 images for inclusion in the calendar. For the second round judges were presented with the top 12 vote getting images and were asked to vote again for the one grand prize picture and the four best of category pictures.

For my part, choosing the image to receive the grand prize presented no difficulty what so ever. After the Storm by Raymond Cassel was clearly the best entry in the contest. The image was original, realistic in its depiction of dealing with the consequences of a martian dust storm, and technically well executed. Obviously my fellow judges were in agreement on this one. I asked Raymond if it would be okay with him if I used his image to illustrate this blog entry and he kindly agreed.

The winning image in the Lunar Settlement category was The Lunar Greenhouse by Jonathan Chapin. For the Orbital Settlement category, Goetz Scheuermann won with his O’Neill Style Cylinder Colony. In the Mars Settlement category, Martian Evening by Timothy Hodg won. Bryan Versteeg took the prize in the Asteroid Settlement category with his Asteroid Mining for Station Creation.

Of the four categories, choosing a winner for the Asteroid Settlement category was the hardest because the three contending images were all so good. Of course the best aspect of the contest was all the new space art that got created. You can see all the artwork that was submitted to the contest, as well as the rest of the winning images, at the Gallery for Space Settlement 2009 Calendar Art Contest. You may also want to read the press release about the contest winners.

In closing, I would like to congratulate not only the contest winners but all the artists who took the time to create and submit entries to the Space Settlement Art Contest.

Ad Astra, Jim

Mars Global Surveyor Image:
Spring Thaw in Northwestern Planum Australe

Saturday I taught the first of a two part four hour class on astronomical image processing at the Adler Planetarium. The class, No Telescope, No Camera? No Problem: Making Astronomical Art with Your PC covers locating and downloading planetary and astronomical image data from the Internet and then using various image processing techniques to create finished pictures.

The first session covered both the basics of image processing and manipulation with Adobe Photoshop and how to use these techniques to transform raw PDS (Planetary Data System) image files into attractive colorized pictures. An added bonus was that these techniques are also applicable to the processing of images produced by digital cameras. The class consisted of both a lecture component and a demonstration component. Images used during the class were all downloaded from NASA JPL PDS Missions site.

For the demonstration component of the class, I demonstrated the following techniques:

• contrast enhancement and colorization of a single Viking Lander image of the Martian surface
• combining separate red, green, and blue Viking Lander images in order to produce a color picture while employing the contrast manipulation techniques previously illustrated
• combining red and blue filter images from the Mars Global Surveyor Wide Angle Camera and synthesizing a green channel to create a color picture
• using a Galileo image of asteroid Gaspra to explain enlarging and sharpening.

For some of the techniques, I showed that there was more than one way to get the job done and that the choice of methods really depended on the picture that was being worked. There was a lot of ground to cover and the class ran longer than its scheduled two hours. In addition to using Photoshop, I used both GIMP (with the PDS plug-in) and NASAView software to demonstrate how to open PDS image files and save them in standard graphics formats.

One of the exercises was to create a color picture of Mars by combining the image data from two Mars Global Surveyor Wide Angle Camera images: one taken using the blue filter, the other using the red filter. A small section of that picture is shown above. For purposes of comparison, you can compare this image with the Spring Thaw in Northwestern Planum Australe version posted on the Malin Space Science Systems web site.

Part two of the class will be held this Saturday and will cover the processing of astronomical images stored in the FITS (Flexible Image Transport System) format. For a list of this and other classes currently available from the Adler Planetarium, visit their classes page.

Library of Congress image of Titanic survivors alongside Carpathia

The Library of Congress has just released over 3,000 royalty free photographs on Flickr. While this represents just a tiny fraction of the Library’s 1 million plus digital images, it does provide a new avenue of access to the collection.

The release consists of two collections. The 1930s-40s in Color collection features 1,615 pictures from the Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information. The News in the 1910s collection consists of 1,500 black and white photos from the George Grantham Bain News Service which even includes a photograph of George Washington’s teeth. Together these two image collections provide a fascinating look back at American history of the early to mid-20th century.

One of the photographs that I came across while going through the collection was the image shown above: TITANIC survivors on way to rescue-ship CARPATHIA. If you examine the full size image of the photograph you will see that it doesn’t look quite right. Also interestingly the photo is dated as “between 1910 and 1915″. I found this curious since the exact date of the recovery of the Titanic’s survivors is a matter of record (April 15, 1912). So is it a photograph of one of Titanic’s lifeboats - or just some generic or staged lifeboat image that the news service labeled as being of survivors of the Titanic?

An excerpt from the full size version on Flickr is shown in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1. Full size section of Titanic survivors in lifeboat being rescued by the Carpathia.

I next went to the Library of Congress’ site and downloaded their full size scan (22 megabytes). Shown below is a full size excerpt of the two passengers from the rear upper left of the lifeboat.

Figure 2. Full size excerpt from the Library of Congress’ scan.

From this high resolution version, it appears obvious that the original glass negative has been retouched in the form of someone inking in black lines in order to “improve” the picture. In my opinion the emotional impact of the image suffers as a consequence and the poor quality of this “improvement” serves as a visual distraction to the viewer

I recommend that you take a trip over to the Library of Congress Flicker Photograph Collection and browse through the collection. For more information about the Library of Congress photographs on Flickr visit the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Reading Room. The full digital image collection of the Library of Congress can be browsed at the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Online Catalog where over 1 million digitized images are available.