Found Wood Assemblage Earth and Planetary Science

Veneer Theory, Ron van der Ende, 2014. Bas-relief in salvaged wood, 60″ x 61″ x 6″.

Dutch artist Ron van der Ende wanders the streets of Rotterdam, salvaging unwanted wood to make, amongst other delightful, enormous multimedia works, wood assemblages like giant diagrams of our Earth, celestial bodies and geological cross-sections.

Europa, Ron van der Ende, 2015. Bas-relief in salvaged wood, 168 x 168 x 14cm

Volcano (Moses and Geology), Ron van der Ende, 2012, Bas-relief in salvaged wood,  229 x 152 x 12cm

Watershed (Yosemite), Ron van der Ender, 2013, Bas-relief in salvaged wood, 180 x 200 x 12cm.

Don't miss his portfolio, where you'll also find minerals, gems, spaceships and more.

De Revolutionibus - a portrait of Copernicus & his heliocentric solar system

De Revolutionibus, linocut, 2008, Ele Willoughby

To celebrate his birthday, here is my portrait Copernicus (19 February 1473 – 24 May 1543) and his model of the celestial spheres, or as we would say, the solar system. Copernicus is shown in green with a lily of the valley, the standard Renaissance symbol to indicate a medical doctor, since like most proto-scientists, or 'philosophers' (doctors of philosophy) he learned his astronomy incidentally, since astrology was considered a vital diagnostic tool for medicine. His planetary model is shown as he conceived it in gold. Using the ancient Greek and Roman symbols, the heliocentric solar system has the following planets: Mercury (the fleet-footed messenger with his serpents and staff, the caduceus), Venus (goddess of beauty - the mirror, like an ankh), Earth (4 cardinal directions), Mars (spear and shield), Jupiter (thunderbolt) and Saturn (the scythe of Time). The outer planets had yet to be discovered. Beyond Saturn, he envisioned the sphere of the "fixed stars".

Copernicus' great work, "De revolutionibus orbium coelestium libri sex" (or "Six Books on the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres"), commonly known as "De Revolutionibus" (or "On the Revolutions") was finally approved for publication as he lay on his death bed. Was this due to perfectionism, fears, or religious belief and the concerns that displacing the Earth from the centre of the universe might conflict with literal interpretations of the Bible? Perhaps we will never know. But we do know that as a consequence of the publication of this provocative volume, the Western world experienced what is now known as the Copernican Revolution. This is a landmark in the history of science and culture.

The story of precisely how De Revolutionibus entered Western culture is told in Owen Gringrich's The Book Nobody Read (see sci & lit), which details the census he made of existing first and second editions of Copernicus' famous posthumous work, how he went about this and what he learned. There are at least 600 existing copies of the 1st and 2nd edition. There is plenty of evidence of enthusiastic readings, rapid transfer of information about interpretations, as well as negative reactions, amongst a Renaissance who's who. I learned several things from this book including a convincing argument that the "epicycles upon epicycles" story is a myth (one does not need circles upon circles to be added to the Ptolemaic geocentric planetary system model to predict "retrograde" motion) and contemporaries of Copernicus were often more excited about the details of the math and getting rid of the Ptolemaic equant than they were about the idea that we could live on a moving planet in a sun-centred solar system (bizarre to the modern reader)! Also interesting, is that Eames, of mid-century designer-chair fame (amongst other things), took many of the photographs in the book (The Book Nobody Read), having been hired to design IBM's display in honour of the 500 year anniversary of Copernicus' birth.

Exoplanet Travel Posters

I've written previously about retro travel posters for otherwhere - different places in spacetime, different planets within our solar system, and previous geological eras. NASA has recently released a delightful collection of retro travel posters for the growing collection of exoplanets. With ongoing planetary science research into planets outside our own solar system (beyond Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Nepture and the larger planetessimals like the ever-popular Pluto and lesser-known Sedna and so forth), there is now a immense database of planets orbitting other stars. Further, astronomers and planetary scientists are able to deduce not only the existence of these planets (by, for instance, the way their home stars' light dims when planets pass between us and the stars), but often their scale, mass and other physical properties. These retro-style travel posters are a fabulous art/science collaboration, means of communicating science and plain old beautiful graphic design. They are also inspiring of humanity's dreams of space exploration. I approve wholeheartedly.

Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech.

The planet Kepler-16b orbits a binary star. It may be a rocky terrestrial planet, like our Earth, or a gassy giant like Jupiter, though they've selected to show a more familiar terrestrial planet but point out that one of unfamiliar (and perhaps unexpected) consequences of having two suns.

Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Planet HD 40307g has twice the volume and eight times the mass of Earth! It may be rocky or an icy gas giant ...but it most certainly has one heck of a gravitational pull.

Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Kepler-186f is an exciting find; it was the first Earth sized planet detected believed to be in the habitable zone around a star, where temperature conditions could allow liquid water. Unlike our sun, Kepler-186f orbits a much colder, redder star. So, if it were to have plant life using photosynthesis, they infer that, "ts photosynthesis could have been influenced by the star's red-wavelength photons, making for a color palette that's very different than the greens on Earth".

You can find and download the exoplanet posters here.

In other news, in 2015, I hope to bring you more magpie&whiskeyjack posts. I haven't disappeared, or retired, but 2014 posts were few and far between, because baby, as they say. I'm working on balancing my various artistic, scientific and other endeavours with being a new parent. I'll get there, and eventually manage to share all that I would like to!

Winter Solstice

Happy winter solstice! Here in the Northern Hemisphere, I've always felt that the winter solstice and the coming lengthening of days is worth celebrating. As winter begins here, this will be the shortest day, and while it will be cold in the coming months, there will be more light.

Tyrrhenian Sea and Solstice Sky Credit & Copyright: Danilo Pivato, Source: apod.nasa.gov via minouette on Pinterest

The length of days varies little at the equator, and in the high arctic and antarctic we have the midnight sun in summer and no sun over the horizon in winter. Surprisingly, we can use a Ptolemaic idea to explain this. In Ancient Greece, they imagined that the objects observed in the sky were placed on a series of concentric spheres around the Earth. While we no longer imagine celestial bodies pinned to spheres of quitessence, the idea of the celestial sphere is still useful for mapping the apparent paths of any astronomical body in the sky. From our perspective on the surface of our planet, the sun traces a arc path across the sky, like that in the photo above. On any day this path is of course due to the rotation of the Earth around its axis. Over the course of the year, because of the tilt of the axis, the position of the arc varies as the earth completes its rotation along its elliptical path around the sun. At the equator, the the path of the sun in the sky makes an untilted arc to the north or south of the celestial equator (the imaginary line cutting the imaginary sky sphere in half). As we move away from the equator, the relative path of the sun appears more and more tilted (directly proportional to latitude). This tilt means the paths of the sun at the extremes of the yearly orbit, the two solstices, are quite different lengths. Away from the equator, the apparent path of the sun is quite long (maximal, in fact) at the summer solstice and quite short at the winter solstice. The image below shows the extemes of the paths of the sun on the celestial sphere above a point at mid-latitudes. If you go to higher latitudes this tilt of the two extreme paths of the sun become more and more tilted until the winter path is entirely below the horizon.

Source: orbitingfrog.com via minouette on Pinterest

There are other astronomical cycles which affect our Earth, but which are not easy for individuals to observe, because they are much longer than human lifespans. These are known as the Milankovitch cycles and include things like procession of the Earth's axis (which moves like the children's toy, a spinning top or gyroscope) over a cycle of roughly 26,000 years.

Different cultures have developped different calendars, often, if not exclusively, based on their astronomical observations. In ancient Mesoamerica, the Long Count calendar broke time into a variety of units, as we do (days, weeks, months, years, centuries, millenia, eons). They had K'in (one day), Winal (20 days), 1 Tun = 18 Winal (360 days, almost 1 year), 1 K'atun = 20 Tun (7200 days, almost 20 years), B'ak'tun = 20 K'atun (144,000 days or almost 394 years), Piktun = 20 B'ak'tun (2,880,000 days or roughly 7,885 years), Kalabtun = 20 Piktun (57,600,000 days or roughly 157,704 years), K'inchiltun = 20 Kalabtun (1,152,000,000 days or roughly 3,154,071 years), Alautun = 20 K'inchiltun (23,040,000,000 days or roughly 63,081,429 years). Today happens to be the end of a B'ak'tun, which while nifty, it is not the end of the Mayan calendar. In the Mayan notation this day would be 13.0.0.0.0 which would have last occurred at the mythical creation day of this the fourth world, Monday, Aug 11, 3114 BCE (which is no more accurate, of course, than Bishop Usher's date, since of course, our planet is roughly 4.2 billion years old). The image at left shows the east side of stela C, Quirigua with mythical creation date in 13 (or 0) baktun, 0 katun, 0 tun, 0 uinal, 0 kin, 4 Ahau and 8 Cumku and corresponds to August 11, 3114 BCE in the Gregorian calendar (via wikipedia). Now previous worlds in the Mayan mythology only lasted 13 B'ak'tun, but there are inscriptions which refer to the end of the Piktun, which will not occur until 13 October 4772, so it's clear they assumed the world would be around a lot longer than this one solstice. So, if you would like to celebrate, celebrate the lengthening of days (at least here in the Northern Hemisphere), or go ahead and celebrate the end of the Mayan B'ak'tun as a notable date to a fascinating culture, or with tongue planted firmly in cheek, the bizarre variation on millennial pop culture myths of the end of days. Strange eschatological misconceptions seem like as good an excuse for a party as any. It'll be a while until we have the next prediction of an apocalypse.

(x-posted to minouette)

Retro Spacetime Travel Posters

As a printmaker I really enjoy the graphic design of vintage travel posters and can see why they serve as a source of inspiration today. There are many retro style travel posters for all your favorite imaginary places (in every universe from Star Wars to Harry Potter). Today, I'm bringing you some retro travel posters for real places, with a planetary science twist. These destinations are far, far away in terms of either time or space, or both.

I really enjoy the posters Amy Martin created for the 826LA Echo Park Time Travel Mart. I have this one at home. (Funds from sales support literacy programs in LA).



'Life is Bigger in Pangaea' reminds me of The Dechronization of Sam MaGruder, published posthumously, by famed paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson (a great read, by the way).




Time travel, evolution, and chaos theory (the 'butterfly effect' or SDIC, sensitive dependence on initial conditions) in that one!

Andy Rohr has created a series of retro travel posters for Mars. I particularly like the two moons, Phobos and Deimus next to the rocket.

Mars is a popular destination it seems. Ron Guyatt has done a series of retro travel posters for specific Martian destinations (available through his Etsy shop).

"This piece is a fantasy depiction of the Cryptic Region Geysers on Mars. Martian geysers are putative sites of small-scale jet-like eruptions that occur in the south polar region region of Mars during the spring thaw. These features are unique to the south polar region of Mars in an area informally called the cryptic region, at latitudes 60° to 80° south and longitudes 150°W to 310°W; this 1 meter deep ice transition area between the scarps of the thick polar ice layer and the permafrost is where clusters of the apparent geyser systems are located."

He's also imagined the famed Martian volcano Olympus Mons (amongst other sites) and made a series of Venus travel posters too.

Steve Thomas has many vintage style travel posters in his portfolio, including ones for Mars, Venus, the Moon, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Titan, Europa and even the asteroid belt. Wouldn't you love to sail the methane seas of Neptune?

magpie&whiskeyjack mentioned Steve Thomas' propaganda posters, earlier this year.

Out of this world

Amongst my obsessions are globes - but not just of our home planet, but of extra-terrestrial bodies as well. The photo shows my globe (of the earth, with the transits of many great explorers - sadly limited to the Western sort... but better than nothing), my moon-globe and my celestial sphere. The heavenly-named celestial sphere, is a globe with the constellations 'pinned' to the 2D surface of the sphere - as if there really were geocentric Ptolemaic spheres. I would love to have globes of the other planets and satellites (the natural moon-like sort, not the human-made type) in our solar system. The Map Room has a post about what is currently available: the moon from Replogle, Mars and Venus from Sky and Telescope. The globes for our nearest neighbour planets, as well as the moon, and three of the Jovian satellites (moons of Jupiter - once known as the Medician stars, because Galileo knew how to court a sponsor): Callisto, Ganymede and Europa, are based on satellite photography or topography data, of course. The gores (pieces from which a globe is made, since there is no made to map a 2D rectangle onto a sphere) are available, free from the USGS Astrogeology Research Program (also here, here and here). For Mars, they offer photographic or topological gores, as well as instructions on how to make your own tennis-ball or 6.6 inch size Mars globes! I know what paper engineering project I am tackling next!