Artsnova Digital Art and Space

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.

Apollo 13 astronaut James Lovell, Jim Plaxco, and NSS Executive Director George Whitesides and the Heinlein Award

I recently took the time to cast my ballot for whom I considered deserving of the Robert A. Heinlein Memorial Award. This award is sponsored by the National Space Society and serves to honor those individuals who have made significant lifetime contributions to the creation of a free spacefaring civilization. The Award is in memory of science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein. In addition to his hard SF novels, Heinlein served as a Director of the L5 Society - which later merged with the National Space Institute to form the National Space Society. The 12th Heinlein Award will be presented at the National Space Society’s 27th International Space Development Conference to be held in Washington, DC in May 2008.

If you take a look at the above picture, you will see me holding the Heinlein Award that was presented to Captain James Lovell of Apollo 13 fame in 2004 at a ceremony at the Illinois Institute of Technology. And yes, the award is in the form of a brass cannon. Why a cannon? In what I consider Heinlein’s best novel - The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - the brass cannon was the symbol of the lunar revolution. In fact The Brass Cannon was the working title of the book until it was renamed The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Quoting from the book: “When Luna adopts a flag, I would like it to be a cannon… It can fly in our hearts… a symbol for all fools so ridiculously impractical as to think they can fight city hall.”

In order to be eligible to receive the Heinlein Award, the person must either still be living or have passed away less than three years prior to the starting date of the ISDC at which the award is presented. Additionally, a person can receive the Heinlein Award only once. Previous Heinlein Award winners are Dr. Gerard K. O’Neill, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Dr. Wernher von Braun, Gene Roddenberry, Dr. Robert H. Goddard, Dr. Buzz Aldrin, Dr. Carl Sagan, Neil Armstrong, Robert Zubrin, Capt. James Lovell, and Gen. Chuck Yeager.

In voting for the recipient, you get to vote for three candidates - first, second, and third choices. A list of the top vote getters from prior years is provided as an aid but space is provided for write-ins of your own. The list of previous non-winning top vote getters is:

Online voting for the Heinlein Award ends January 15, 2008. Voting is restricted to current members of the National Space Society so if you’re not a member and want to be able to vote, you had better join.

The CGSociety and NVIDIA are sponsoring an Amazing Creations digital art contest. The contest challenges digital artists to “create artistically and technically excellent images of things that are impossible in the real world… Specifically we want to see exciting new images, that are clearly a product of the digital world. However, we don’t just want technically excellent renders that are lacking in artistic beauty. The whole point is to create images that are clearly creations of the digital world but retain the artistic beauty and composition of a traditional painting.” Prizes for the contest total over $21,000.

It wasn’t until today that I actually submitted my entry for the contest. Unfortunately contest rules do not allow me to publish that image here at this time. I will add it at a later date. You can see my entry Inside A Transdimensional Timeship in the contest forum. This image was inspired by the tessellated works of M.C. Escher. To create this image I used a combination of Bryce and Photoshop. I don’t use Bryce much anymore and am currently focusing on improving my skills with Lightwave. However for this project I choose to go with Bryce based on my superior familiarity with that package.

The submission period for the contest ends on January 7 2008. You can see the art that has been submitted to the contest at the NVArt CGSociety forum thread.

Ad Astra, Jim

Diverging from this blog’s standard bill of fare, I just completed an article on online order processing for my Digital Excursions web site. The article How To Lose Online Customers reviews my recent experience attempting to join the IEEE. Needless to say I wound up not joining IEEE. If you are a webmaster doing e-commerce, you might be interested in my observations of the shortcomings of the way in which IEEE implemented the process of purchasing a membership.

Happy Computing, Jim

NASA Christmas Cards

Right now, NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, the first woman to command the International Space Station, Russian cosmonaut and Flight Engineer Yuri Malenchenko, and NASA astronaut and Flight Engineer Dan Tani are circling the Earth aboard the International Space Station. In fact they will be spending their Christmas holiday in space.

In light of this, NASA has created an online tool that will allow you to send a personalized greeting to the crew of the ISS. You can choose from one of four card types, shown above, and type your message to the crew on the reverse side.

To send your own message to the ISS crew, go to http://www.nasa.gov/ and look for the link titled “Send Holiday Greetings to the Station Crew.” Mouse over the link to open the window and then click on the “Send Your Greetings” Now link.

It’s really simple and you’ll feel good letting the astronauts and cosmonaut know that they are in our thoughts.

Merry Christmas, Jim

3D object created in CB Model Pro

This last week I learned of and downloaded a new 3D modeling program. The beta version of CB Model Pro is a free download that can be used indefinitely if you fill out the online registration.

CB Model Pro sports a very simple user interface. It operates by deforming the surface of either the supplied primitives or very simple imported objects. The supplied primitives are the sphere, cylinder, cone, cube, sheet, and torus. 3D object operations that are available are Point Pull, Flatten, Bend, Neck, Scale, and Poke. The degree of deformation applied by these tools is controlled by two simple sliders. There is also a Mirror option so that operations performed on one side of the object are mirrored on the other side.

In addtion to modeling, you can also paint your object. This is accomplished either by applying an image to the model or by using the paintbrush tool.

Once finished with your 3D model, you can export it as either an obj, stl, wrl, or 3dxml object. However, for the stl and 3dxml formats, only the 3D mesh is exported. The CB Model Pro web site has a gallery of sample textured objects to give you an idea of what can be done with the product.

If you have questions about the program, you can turn to the 12 page PDF for program documentation. There is a forum for the software advertised on the web site but stupidly they have chosen to restrict both read and write access to only those people who have previously purchased software from SolidWorks. Definitely not a bright marketing move.

The Pluses

Okay it’s free. It’s also a very simple program to learn and use. I created the object in the picture used to illustrate this article in minutes using only the Neck tool and application of a texture image.

The Minuses

It would be nice if you were able to name your saved models - rather than having the program arbitrarily assign names like file1.cb3d Precision of manipulation is really not there. It is a simple tool that performs simple tasks to create simple objects. You start with a primitive, select an operation, click somewhere on your primitive and drag. And a forum closed to everyone except owners of SolidWorks software is not at all helpful.

Summary

If want to play with creating simple 3D objects in an intuitive manner then give CB Model Pro a try.
Ad Astra, Jim

Moon Base Art - David Robinson

Time for traditional artists to grab their brushes and digital artists to grab their digital brushes. The National Space Society is sponsoring its second space art contest. Like the first space art contest last year, the submitted art is to depict space settlements in our solar system and unlike so many other art contests, this one is free. Yep, there is no submission fee. Art is to be submitted in one of four categories: lunar settlements, Mars settlements, asteroid settlements, or orbital settlements. Twelve winning images will be chosen and used to illustrate the NSS 2009 Space Settlement Calendar. FYI, the NSS 2008 Space Settlement Art Calendar has been sold out since early last month.

In the interest of full disclosure, I chaired the NSS Space Settlement Calendar Committee and served as chief judge for the previous contest. This time around, I have limited my participation to serving as a contest judge. My fellow judges are Don Davis, Bart Leahy (this year’s chair and padawan apprentice), Loretta Hidalgo-Whitesides, and my pal David Robinson whose lunar base artwork adorns this post.

This year’s space art contest has a great line up of prizes. There will be twelve winning entries selected: one Grand Prize, four First Prizes, and seven winning entries. Full contest details are available at the NSS Space Settlement Art Contest site.

Here is a great chance for all space artists to create their visions of a spacefaring future - a future where humanity’s home is no longer just the Earth but wherever we choose to live in the expanse of the solar system. But hurry, the deadline for submissions is December 31, 2007.

Think Space!

Ad Astra, Jim

Apollo 17 Astronaut Harrison Schmitt (right) and Jim Plaxco at the 2007 International Space Development Conference

The Winter 2007 issue of Ad Astra, the magazine of the National Space Society, features an article on the Top 20 Space Visionaries. The goal: to identify those 20 individuals alive today who are having the greatest impact on humanity’s future in space.

The twenty people listed are:

1. Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites and SpaceShipOne fame.
2. Peter Diamandis - founder of SEDS, cofounder of International Space University and XPRIZE founder.
3. Eric Anderson - cofounder of Space Adventures.
4. Robert Bigelow - founder of Bigelow Aerospace which aims to provide inflatable habitats to low earth orbit.
5. Dr. Stephen Hawking - noted physicist and supporter of human space exploration.
6. Elon Musk - founder of SpaceX, which is working to create a family of low cost ELVs.
7. Mike Griffin - the current NASA Administrator.
8. Dr. Sally Ride - the first U.S. female astronaut to go into space.
9. Dr. Martin Sweeting - designer and promoter of small satellites and CEO of Surrey Satellite Technology Limited.
10. Buzz Aldrin - most noted for the Apollo 11 mission but also an active advocate of human space exploration.
11. Harrison “Jack” Schmitt - Apollo 17 astronaut, geologist, and champion of mining the Moon for Helium-3 as a fuel for fusion reactors.
12. Franklin Chang-Diaz - former director of the Advanced Space Propulsion Laboratory at Johnson Space Center and creator of VASIMIR (Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket). He created Ad Astra Rocket in 2005 to pursue VASIMIR development.
13. Russell “Rusty” Schweickart - Apollo 9 , cofounder of the Association of Space Explorers and chairman of the Board of Directors for the B612 Foundation, an organization whose goal is to significantly alter the orbit of an asteroid in a controlled manner by 2015.
14. Dr. Laurie Leshin - Director of Science and Exploration at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
15. Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam - former President of India and aeronautical engineer. Worked on development of India’s first launch vehicle: SLV-III.
16. Anoushen Ansari - of Ansari XPRIZE fame and first female space tourist via a 2004 Soyuz trip to ISS.
17. Simon “Pete” Worden - doctorate in astronomy, brigadier general in the USAF who was involved in the DC-X and Clementine programs. Currently director of NASA Ames Research Center.
18. Neil Degrasse Tyson - Director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York.
19. Bradley Edwards - a leader in the field of space elevators.
20. Robert Zubrin - author, co-developer of the Mars Direct concept, founder of the Mars Society.

You can post your comments about this list to the NSS Members Write blog. My comment on the list of visionaries was to wonder why Dr. Stephen Hawking was on the list but Sir Richard Branson was not. After all, it is Richard Branson who founded Virgin Galactic to take Scaled Composite’s SpaceShipOne to the next level and to actually open the door to real private enterprise based space tourism - as opposed to tourism sponsored by the Russian government. I would drop Hawking and substitute Branson.

And what about Dr. Peter Glaser, the father of the Solar Power Satellite concept and member of the Space Technology Hall of Fame? His idea of creating a system of Earth orbiting solar power satellites to supply electric power to Earth could have a profound positive impact on our future. Also there is Dr. David Criswell, creator of the Lunar Solar Power concept and Director of the Institute of Space Systems Operations at the University of Houston. The Lunar Solar Power concept relocates those Earth orbiting solar power satellites to the surface of the Moon.

As to who to drop from the list to make room for these two additions: I would remove two of the following - take your pick: Dr. Laurie Leshin or Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam or Dr. Martin Sweeting or Neil Degrasse Tyson.

What do you think? You can comment here or at the NSS Members Write blog.

Ad Astra, Jim

It’s time for Windycon

How quickly a year can pass. It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was posting my schedule for the 2006 Windycon Science Fiction convention. Once again I’ll be a participant in Windycon which opens Friday Nov 9 and continues through Sunday Nov 11. Following is what’s in store for me this year.

The Lunar Barrier Grand Ballroom North, Saturday 11:00:

From 1968 to 1972, eight manned missions reached the Moon. In the past 35 years, man has never risen above low Earth orbit. Will this be the state of manned space exploration for the rest of our lifetimes or will we actually once again rise above Earth’s gravity well? Will we be able to say “To Lunar orbit and beyond!” Panelists: T. Buckell, B. Higgins, J. Plaxco, F. Ruiz, H. Spencer

This should be an interesting panel especially since we have an election coming up in a year. Given that the return to the Moon program is a product of the Bush administration and widely derided by Democrats, I fear that plans for a return to the Moon may be short lived. I find it strange and disappointing that the party that gave us the Apollo missions to the Moon should be so non-supportive of a return visit.

The Vision for Space Exploration Grand Ballroom North, Saturday Noon:

Is NASA’s new preoccupation with a return to the Moon a massive mistake, a wonderful idea, or of no real importance? Where should we be going in space, and how? Panelists: B. Higgins, J. Liss, J. Plaxco, H. Spencer

Another excellent topic of discussion. The Vision for Space Exploration is the most strategic mission that NASA has been given since Apollo. What’s even more amazing is that this program has survived for three years in the current political environment. If the American voters want to see this project last beyond the end of George Bush’s term as President, then we had better do everything humanly possible to make sure that the next president continues to support this vision. One thing you can do to help is to join the National Space Society.

Prints and Originals Orly, Sunday Noon:

You look at the originals and crave them, but the prices seem so high. When should you consider buying a print rather than an original? What exactly does it mean to be a print (and how are they created)? Panelists: P. Charlifu, S.V. Johnson, J. Lee, J. Plaxco, D. Waltz

Looking around my office, I count 8 prints and 4 originals hanging on my walls. Interestingly, I bought three of the originals at a couple of different Windycon art auctions many years ago and they actually cost less than most of the prints I have.

The whole issue of originals vs prints has been further complicated by the advent of digital art and the giclee or giclée. Digital prints represent an entirely new arena. But there is precedent provided by the world of photography. For example, the film negative is analogous to the digital file in that both are the source of the final printed image.

The Windycon art show can be a great place to acquire art at a bargain price. I’ll have several of my own pieces in the show (haven’t decided which yet) so if you’re at the convention, take the time to look for my art in the show.

Politics in the Future Orly, Sunday 2:00:

No, we aren’t interested if you think Dennis Kucinich should run against John Cox in the general election (well, we might be interested, but not for the purposes of this panel). We’re more interested in thoughts of politics in the long term. Will democracy survive? What sort of political systems will exist after mankind colonizes the planets? D. Bingle, J. Lilly, J. Plaxco, W. Thomasson, L. Zeldes

Definitely the most open ended panel I’ll be on. Who knows where this one will go. Interplanetary Fascism in the 23rd century? Technological advances, smallish physically isolated communities, the nature of trade between different settlements, the legal regime of ownership - these will all be ingredients thrown into the mix. And of course the plight of the individual will be a factor as well. To quote Robert LeFevre: “To live is good. To live well is better. To live in abundance, security, and joy is the acme of living.”

See you at Windycon. Jim