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!

Periodic Table of Storytelling

Since I've been thinking about the intersection of science and literature, I thought I'd share the Periodic Table of Storytelling.

Periodic Table of Storytelling by Dawn Paladin/ComputerSherpa

You can find a larger version here. I really like how he used the concept behind a periodic table of elements, rather than being too strictly literal and arbitrarily forcing their categorized tropes into the precise formation of the periodic table.  Each element has a one to three character acronym and little description to describe a trope, and they are grouped in periodic table-like families. Also, I'm charmed that he's listed Tbl Parodic Table of the Elements as one of the (pale yellow) Metatropes. Ooh, self-referentiallity! Further, the atomic number is replaced by 'Popularity in kilowicks' or the number of thousands of links to its page within the wiki. At the bottom he explains how the elements bond together in various stories (only two of which I know....  so I can't really tell is there is anything more than a design choice behind the nature of the drawn bonds), much like elements in a chemical compound. This is a a Parodic Table of the Elements made with some care and love.

Where entomology meets fashion

French photographer and graphic artist Laurent Seroussi has created a fascinating series of personal works entitled  Insectes combining photos of women (with a rather high fashion aesthetic) and anthropods, including scarab beetles, a leaf insect, a scolopendra centipede, a member of Heteroptera (the "true bugs"), and more. The melding of the women with the insects (and other anthropods) is quite seemless, creating beautiful, contemporary composite creatures, like a modern twist on images of fairies. I find the beautiful images have the intriguing effect of humanizing the 'bugs' rather than making the women into creatures.

Scarabée Chinois

Punaise

Scarab

Scolopandre

Phasme

He has an extensive portfolio of photographic and video work, including the more editorial place where jewellery design meets botany.

↬jvdarcy on pinterest
 

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.

Closet Conspiracy

Conspiracy of ravens, that is!

Birkiland sells elegant Raven clothes hangers by Ingibjorg Hanna Bjarnadottir. These are laser-cut plywood, come in with steel chains from which they can be suspended from the ceiling (good for the currently-popular clothing-as-wall-art application) or with traditional hook or two clips for hanging a skirt in the closet. They also, mysteriously, come in white. The clever concept would of course work equally well with a convocation of eagles, a parliament of owls, a murder of crows or a charm of magpies, though the bold, graphic effect perhaps works best with a monochromatic birds. Also, I suspect that a a pitying of doves would be more elegant than a flamboyance of flamingos and more practical than a trembling of finches. I have also seen wire hangers bent so that they are shaped like bird silhouettes, but sadly, I do not recall where I saw this.
[via More Ways to Waste Times]

Terms of venery are readily found with varying degrees of veracity on the internet. The book An Exaltation of Larks by James Lipton is delightful.