ways to stay creative

for the most part, this list is great (see number 1), but personally, i dont do number 7 (does this surprise you as much as it does me? i dont know, i just never think to do it).

 from life on michigan avenue

ohioans flee earth

link: luminous red nova

actually, twenty-four astronauts are from ohio, including neil armstrong (from wapakoneta) and john glenn

es ist wie es ist

it is what it is, it was what is was, and i'm working myself nearly into a stupor right now so i'm prepared as much as possible for what will be soon. life is good at throwing curve balls, and many at once!

(image link)

australia day 2011

there are so many events happening today around sydney in honor of australia day that i just cant keep up. i managed to walk to the harbour to watch the ferrython. there were a lot of boats of all sizes racing under the harbour bridge! this photo is a hint of the event before the real chaos began, but i like it...

then i returned home to eat lunch and decided that its too bad its not a holiday in the rest of the world, because i keep getting "urgent" work emails! hmph.

anyway, happy australia day!

how do you hold your pencil?

how often do you write with a pencil or pen these days?

are you holding your writing utensil correctly?

do kids even learn how to write in cursive in school these days?

i remember learning the letters in cursive in second grade. i wanted to write my name at the top of my assignments in cursive, but i wasnt allowed to, even though i knew how, until we officially learned all the letters in our names together in class. it felt to me like it took ages until we finally learned the cursive "n."

space-themed christmas

according to the photos from the big picture, its beginning to look a lot like christmas.

has anyone strolled around london this year to take photos? apparently london's carnaby street has space-themed decorations this year!

cool! i'd like to see more pictures.

space advent calendars

i'm not sure why creating advent calendars has become a fad this holiday season, but i'm not complaining because the imagery is beautiful! so here are several links to help you enjoy your december!

•  zooniverse advent calendar brought to you by the creative folks behind the galaxy zoo.

• hubble space telescope advent calendar - from the always great photo blog the big picture

• solar system advent calendar created by emily lakdawalla at the planetary society blog

• science in school - in lieu of a visual calendar, you can sign up to receive an email for each day of advent that includes inspiring teaching ideas about science! science games, experiments, facts, websites or beautiful pictures!

have you seen any others around? 

supercell storm

fantastic storm photo for national geographic by sean heavey.

where do good ideas come from?

a new book by steven johnson is out now called Where Good Ideas Come From. he argues that most ideas do not come from EUREKA! moments, but rather slowly simmer over time and usually come to fruition under the influence of external stimulation. as he says, "chance favours the connected mind."

here's a short visual summary of him describing where good ideas come from:



i think this is an interesting concept to consider because its easy to get frustrated when inspiration doesnt show itself quickly, yet we see other people coming up with good ideas and achieving success**. especially in the US, people seem to be on the lookout for a "million dollar idea" that will allow them to live the profitable "american dream." certainly that is possible and happens, but that is not the way most of our lives operate. i think that the "quick fix" mindset inevitably leads to disappointment, which can easily destroy our motivation to maintain the effort necessary to achieve any sort of goal.

the concept that some ideas need to marinate in my system for a while until they are agitated by the right force is somehow comforting. more good ideas are yet to come! i just need to be patient and continue building momentum by reading, talking to other people, exposing myself to new experiences, and maintaining an observant, empathetic mind.

i had never heard of steven johnson before reading an interview with him on the guardian, but now i think i will read his book.

** of course everyone has their own idea of "success." is it attaining lots of money, or having a family, or helping others, or maintaining a career, or simply feeling happy?

NASA and etsy: space craft contest!

NASA and etsy have created a creative contest to commemorate the end of the NASA Space Shuttle Program: the Space Craft Contest. to enter, "share an original handmade item or work of art inspired by the NASA Space Shuttle Program and space exploration at large."

what a great idea!

prizes for the winners include etsy shopping sprees, stuff from nasa and etsy, and a trip to see the final space shuttle launch ever as NASA’s VIP guest!! and if that isnt enough awesome, your artwork might even be flown on the space shuttle.

the final space shuttle mission is currently scheduled for launch in february 2011 and will voyage to the international space station.

what's great about this contest, in my opinion, is that this contest ideally reaches an audience that science organizations like NASA should be making more of an effort to engage. of etsy's 5.9 million members, 96 percent are women, and most are under the age of 35.

no matter who you are**, submit your creative entries by november 2nd, 2010 (and post them here to so we can all see your work!).

i'm finding myself attracted to the wearable art, like the orbital earrings below, but there are many cool entries so far.



** the contest is open to legal US residents only.

circle puzzle

here's a clever little puzzle for everyone to ponder. without measuring and using only the information on the image, can you figure out the radius of the circle?


please dont give away the solution in the comments, but feel free to share how long it took you or other puzzles you have enjoyed!

via The Marcos Kirsch Experience®

ohio in the fall

i have begun a serious round of travel.

i'm currently in ohio, usa, in the city where i grew up. no matter how long i've been away or from how far away i come for a visit, i feel instantly comfortable and at ease in this house where i grew up. yesterday, i saw loads of family and old friends at my little sister's college graduation party. it was very fun, exhausting, and completely energizing to see so many familiar and supportive faces. everyone giggles at every word i say with any hint of a british accent, but it sounds to me like my midwestern drawl is back full force since i've been here nearly a week! in the flurry of continuous conversation, i managed not to take a single photo during the party :(

here are a few shots i've captured showing hints of the beautiful fall colors that so gracefully cover this part of the world each autumn.





this is my gorgeous niece's "birthday whippy!"

dam goats

this is amazing!


not sure where the image originally came from, but according to tywkiwdbi, "They apparently traverse the wall of the dam to lick salt or other minerals from the stonework." despite looking so precariously perched, from a video of the goats, they frolic about on the dam quite easily!

four-leaf clovers

for some reason i've always had a talent for finding four-leaf clovers. i have no idea why.

while walking across the neighborhood to a friend's house when i was young, i glanced down and thought i saw, among the grass and clovers, a four-leaf clover! i stopped, took a slow step backwards, leaned down hopefully, and found it again!! i was so excited when i confirmed my find that i could hardly believe that just next to it... was another!?! woah!! then i saw another and another and another.... and wondered if i had found the luckiest patch of clovers on earth? i collected all the four-leaf clovers i could find in that little patch and ran back home to show my mom (and to show off to my sister ;)


during the summers of my childhood, i regularly brought home piles of not only four-leaf clovers, but five-leaf and six-leaf clovers as well! the four-leaf clovers were always more abundant than the five-leaf clovers, which were more numerous than the six-leaf clovers. i found a few seven-leaf clovers, but i don't remember ever finding an eight-leaf. apparently the world record is a 21-leaf clover!!

there's something about the abnormal symmetry of the four-leaf clover that is unique enough that my eyes seem to spot it instantly, even amid a huge patch of three-leaf clovers. i always thought, even as a kid, that i was finding the clovers with genetic aberrations, and wondered why it was only this particular genetic irregularity that we commonly consider "lucky."

the first time i observed with a big hands-on telescope, i recognized the benefit of my peculiar talent. a telescope is not usually pointing exactly where you want it to point at the beginning of the night. you have to adjust its position slightly in order to align it to exactly the correct coordinates. you usually have a reference image taken previously from some other telescope in the world, and then you take an image with your telescope and try to match the patterns found in the stars of each image until you find matching patters and can digitally nudge your telescope. depending on the instrument, you could be comparing two images with different orientations, rotations, flips, and/or flops.

the first time i had to do this, i found the process fascinating. i noticed that i was pretty good at the pattern matching bit and realized i had finally found a practical use for my four-leaf-clover-pattern-finding ability!

the point of all this is that i havent found many four-leaf clovers in the UK since i moved here two years ago. i've started wondering whether the four-leaf phenomenon is as environmental as it is genetic, because there are certainly lots of clover patches around here! i dont really know enough about biology to give any more information, but i do know that recently i've been finding a lot more four-leaf clovers in the UK, as you can see in the image above that i took in england's lake district!

i decided to leave that one growing in the ground for someone else to find again. good luck!

astronomy and pornography

is it bad that i feel proud after reading this opening phrase from a blog post by professional astronomer peter coles?

"I started thinking about the analogy between astronomy and pornography after seeing a hilarious blog post by Amanda Bauer..."


astropixie: because astronomy is the pornography of science

wait, what?

i dont know.... back to work.

leaf tie

leaf ties* provide a clever and super cute way to organize and decorate!



found at lufdesign via tywkiwdbi.


*fyi: my birthday is at the end of may

robin hood is coming....

thanks to the upcoming release of the new robin hood movie (yes, an australian actor is playing mr hood), the month of may is officially "robin hood month" in the fair city of nottingham!

i saw this display in the main window of the downtown library:


i'll probably go out with some friends in a couple weekends and get dressed up in medieval garb, or at least wear a bunch of green. the challenge will be to make robin hood costumes that dont look too much like peter pan! maybe i'll play it safe and go with maid marian. any suggestions?

top tech tip

simple and genius.

a caterpillar's camouflage

this awesome photo was taken by WohinAuswandern in malasia.

dirty space news

we can't always take ourselves too seriously, and the universe likes to remind us of this sometimes.

which is why i'm sharing with you one of the best astronomical follies i've come across in recent times. today someone brought to my attention a recently-submitted research paper on hickson compact group 31, a group of small galaxies gravitationally interacting with each other. the paper shows an image of the galaxies in a way i've not seen before:


hahaha! and if that wasnt blatant enough, they changed the color scale and showed the image again later on in the paper!


this is not the only unintentional astronomical knob gag i've seen... the radio image below of the well-studied galaxy, M87, reveals "spectacular and complex structure" in the galaxy that is 50 million light years away.


and last but not least, this is an artist's impression of the XMM-Newton telescope:


amazing(ly detailed!)!

i guess i'll never be too old or "professional" to enjoy a good knob gag! do you know of any others?


UPDATES and CONTRIBUTIONS:

a fellow astronomer, who writes at dark matter sheep, shared with me his image of the cone nebula. here is the published pretty picture, which is pretty good:


here is the version my friend accidentally created in an attempt to make a mosaic. the image caused them to rename the cone nebula: the "knobula!"



telescoper peter coles, who writes at in the dark, has kindly contributed this image of the actual XMM telescope (most phallic design ever?):



"You'll be interested to see these massive space cocks known by astronomers as Herbig Haro objects... this one's even animated!" according to the wiki page, herbig haro objects "are formed when gas ejected by young stars collides with clouds of gas and dust nearby at speeds of several hundred kilometres per second." couldnt have said it better myself!



"no list is complete without Smolčić et al. 2004." indeed. this isnt an actual telescopic image of an object in the universe, but it certainly fits in with today's phallic friday theme! the graph shows the "colors" of thousands of stars. a color is the difference between the light output in one imaging filter compared to another.



we've had an entry from an astrochemist, which i'm going to allow. he explains "Seemingly, these two large molecules experience strong interactions between each other. In solution, they like to pair up and... self organise. To quote the paper, one of these molecules requires "the presence of suitable partners.""



"There is also the Planetary Nebula Spectrograph, or PNS. The logo looks phallic enough but they actually call it the P-N-S just to make sure..."



andy lawrence writes, "The only suitable reply I feel is John Peacock's redshift space correlation function, which you can find at this link. I think you will agree that it reminds one of something that goes nicely together with those cosmic phalli."


this is science people! and i'll point out that most of the contributions to this post have been made by professional astronomers, well beyond graduate school levels of academia. this post also brings a whole new connotation to the slogan of astropixie which has always been "i prefer the hard truth, not a comforting fallacy."