The Very First Picture of the Far Side of the Moon, Taken 60 Years Ago

in Astronomy, History, Photography | November 5th, 2019

Six­ty years ago, mankind got its very first glimpse of the far side of the Moon, so called because it faces away from the Earth. (And as astronomers like Neil DeGrasse Tyson have long tak­en pains to point out to Pink Floyd fans, it isn’t “dark.”) Tak­en by the Sovi­et Union, that first pho­to may not look like much today, espe­cial­ly com­pared to the high-res­o­lu­tion col­or images sent back from the sur­face itself by Chi­na’s Chang’e‑4 probe ear­li­er this year. But with the tech­nol­o­gy of the late 1950s, even the tech­nol­o­gy com­mand­ed by the Sovi­ets’ then-world-beat­ing space pro­gram, the fact that it was tak­en at all seems not far short of mirac­u­lous. How did they do it?

“This pho­to­graph was tak­en by the Sovi­et space­craft Luna 3, which was launched a month after the Luna 2 space­craft became the first man-made object to impact on the sur­face of the Moon,” explains astronomer Kevin Hain­line in a recent Twit­ter thread. “Luna 2 fol­lowed Luna 1, the first space­craft to escape a geo­syn­chro­nous Earth orbit.” Luna 3 was designed to take pho­tographs of the Moon, hard­ly an uncom­pli­cat­ed prospect: “To take pic­tures you have to be sta­ble on three-axes. You have to take the pho­tographs remote­ly. AND you have to some­how trans­fer those pic­tures back to Earth.” The first three-axis sta­bi­lized space­craft ever sent on a mis­sion, Luna 3 “had to use a lit­tle pho­to­cell to ori­ent towards the Moon so that now, while sta­bi­lized, it could take the pic­tures. Which it did. On PHOTOGRAPHIC FILM.”

Even those of us who took pic­tures on film for decades have start­ed to take for grant­ed the con­ve­nience of dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy. But think back to all the has­sle of tra­di­tion­al pho­tog­ra­phy, then imag­ine mak­ing a robot car­ry them out in space. Once tak­en Luna 3’s pho­tos “were then moved to a lit­tle CHEMICAL PLANT to DEVELOP AND DRY THEM.” (In oth­er words, “Luna 3 had a lit­tle 1 Hour Pho­to inside.”) Then they con­tin­ued into “a device that shone a cath­ode ray tube, like in an old­er TV, through them, towards a device that record­ed the bright­ness and con­vert­ed this to an elec­tri­cal sig­nal.” You can read about what hap­pened then in more detail at Damn Inter­est­ing, where Alan Bel­lows describes how the space­craft sent “the light­ness and dark­ness infor­ma­tion line-by-line via fre­quen­cy-mod­u­lat­ed ana­log sig­nal — in essence, a fax sent over radio.”

Sovi­et Sci­en­tists could thus “retrieve one pho­to­graph­ic frame every 30 min­utes or so. Due to the dis­tance and weak sig­nal, the first images received con­tained noth­ing but sta­t­ic. In sub­se­quent attempts in the fol­low­ing few days, an indis­tinct, blotchy white disc began to resolve on the ther­mal paper print­outs at Sovi­et lis­ten­ing sta­tions.” As Luna 3’s pho­tos became clear­er, they revealed, as Hain­line puts it, that “the back­side of the moon was SO WEIRD AND DIFFERENT” — cov­ered in the craters, for exam­ple, which have become its visu­al sig­na­ture. For a mod­ern-day equiv­a­lent to this achieve­ment, we might look not just to Chang’e‑4 but to the image of a black hole cap­tured by the Event Hori­zon Tele­scope this past April — the one that led to an abun­dance of arti­cles like “In Defense of the Blur­ry Black Hole Pho­to” and “We Need to Admit That the Black Hole Pho­to Isn’t Very Good.” Astropho­tog­ra­phy has come a long way, but at least back in 1959 it did­n’t pro­duce quite so many takes.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mankind’s First Steps on the Moon: The Ultra High Res Pho­tos

8,400 Stun­ning High-Res Pho­tos From the Apol­lo Moon Mis­sions Are Now Online

How Sci­en­tists Col­orize Those Beau­ti­ful Space Pho­tos Tak­en By the Hub­ble Space Tele­scope

There’s a Tiny Art Muse­um on the Moon That Fea­tures the Art of Andy Warhol & Robert Rauschen­berg

The Glo­ri­ous Poster Art of the Sovi­et Space Pro­gram in Its Gold­en Age (1958–1963)

Won­der­ful­ly Kitschy Pro­pa­gan­da Posters Cham­pi­on the Chi­nese Space Pro­gram (1962–2003)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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NASA Enlists Andy Warhol, Annie Leibovitz, Norman Rockwell & 350 Other Artists to Visually Document America’s Space Program

in Art, Astronomy, History, Science, Technology | August 9th, 2019

It’s hard to imag­ine that the space-crazed gen­er­al pub­lic need­ed any help get­ting worked up about astro­nauts and NASA in the ear­ly 60s.

Per­haps the wild pop­u­lar­i­ty of space-relat­ed imagery is in part what moti­vat­ed NASA admin­is­tra­tor James Webb to cre­ate the NASA Art Pro­gram in 1962.

Although the pro­gram’s hand­picked artists weren’t edit­ed or cen­sored in any way, they were briefed on how NASA hoped to be rep­re­sent­ed, and the emo­tions their cre­ations were meant capture—the excite­ment and uncer­tain­ty of explor­ing these fron­tiers.

NASA was also care­ful to col­lect every­thing the artists pro­duced while par­tic­i­pat­ing in the pro­gram, from sketch­es to fin­ished work.

In turn, they received unprece­dent­ed access to launch sites, key per­son­nel, and major events such as Project Mer­cury and the Apol­lo 11 Mis­sion.

Over 350 artists, includ­ing Andy Warhol, Nor­man Rock­well, and Lau­rie Ander­son, have brought their unique sen­si­bil­i­ties to the project. (Find NASA-inspired art by Warhol and Rock­well above.)

(And hey, no shame if you mis­tak­en­ly assumed Warhol’s 1987 Moon­walk 1 was cre­at­ed as a pro­mo for MTV…)

Jamie Wyeth’s 1964 water­col­or Gem­i­ni Launch Pad includes a hum­ble bicy­cle, the means by which tech­ni­cians trav­eled back and forth from the launch pad to the con­crete-rein­forced block­house where they worked.

Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Annie Lei­bovitz offers two views of NASA’s first female pilot and com­man­der, Eileen Collins—with and with­out hel­met.

Postage stamp design­er, Paul Calle, one of the inau­gur­al group of par­tic­i­pat­ing artists, pro­duced a stamp com­mem­o­rat­ing the Gem­i­ni 4 space cap­sule in cel­e­bra­tion of NASA’s 9th anniver­sary. When the Apol­lo 11 astro­nauts suit­ed up pri­or to blast off on July 16, 1969, Calle was the only artist present. His quick­ly ren­dered felt tip mark­er sketch­es lend a back­stage ele­ment to the hero­ic iconog­ra­phy sur­round­ing astro­nauts Arm­strong, Aldrin and Collins. One of the items they car­ried with them on their jour­ney was the engraved print­ing plate of Calle’s 1967 com­mem­o­ra­tive stamp. They hand-can­celed a proof aboard the flight, on the assump­tion that post offices might be hard to come by on the moon.

More recent­ly, NASA’s Jet Propul­sion Lab­o­ra­to­ry has enlist­ed a team of nine artists, design­ers, and illus­tra­tors to col­lab­o­rate on 14 posters, a visu­al throw­back to the ones the WPA cre­at­ed between 1938 and 1941 to spark pub­lic inter­est in the Nation­al Parks. You can see the results at the Exo­plan­et Trav­el Bureau.

View an album of 25 his­toric works from NASA’s Art Pro­gram here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lau­rie Ander­son Cre­ates a Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Instal­la­tion That Takes View­ers on an Uncon­ven­tion­al Tour of the Moon

Star Trek‘s Nichelle Nichols Cre­ates a Short Film for NASA to Recruit New Astro­nauts (1977)

NASA Dig­i­tizes 20,000 Hours of Audio from the His­toric Apol­lo 11 Mis­sion: Stream Them Free Online

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Sep­tem­ber 9 for anoth­er sea­son of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Queen Guitarist Brian May Is Also an Astrophysicist: Read His PhD Thesis Online

in Astronomy, Music, Physics | July 1st, 2019

Pho­to by ESO/G. Huede­pohl, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Queen could­n’t pos­si­bly have been Queen with­out Fred­die Mer­cury, nor could it have been Queen with­out Bri­an May. Thanks not least to the recent biopic, Bohemi­an Rhap­sody, the band’s already larg­er-than-life lead singer has become even larg­er still. But its gui­tarist, despite the film’s sur­face treat­ment of his char­ac­ter, is in his own way an equal­ly implau­si­ble fig­ure. Not only did he show musi­cal promise ear­ly, form­ing his first group while still at school, he also got his A Lev­els in physics, math­e­mat­ics, and applied math­e­mat­ics, going on to earn a Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence in Physics with hon­ors at Impe­r­i­al Col­lege Lon­don.

Nat­u­ral­ly, May then went for his PhD, con­tin­u­ing at Impe­r­i­al Col­lege where he stud­ied the veloc­i­ty of, and light reflect­ed by, inter­plan­e­tary dust in the Solar Sys­tem. He began the pro­gram in 1970, but “in 1974, when Queen was but a princess in its infan­cy, May chose to aban­don his doc­tor­ate stud­ies to focus on the band in their quest to con­quer the world.” So wrote The Tele­graph’s Felix Lowe in 2007, the year the by-then 60-year-old (and long world-famous) rock­er final­ly hand­ed in his the­sis. “The 48,000-word tome, Radi­al Veloc­i­ties in the Zodi­a­cal Dust Cloud, which sounds sus­pi­cious­ly like a Spinal Tap LP, was stored in the loft of his home in Sur­rey.” You can read it online here.

Accord­ing to its abstract, May’s the­sis “doc­u­ments the build­ing of a pres­sure-scanned Fab­ry-Per­ot Spec­trom­e­ter, equipped with a pho­to­mul­ti­pli­er and pulse-count­ing elec­tron­ics, and its deploy­ment at the Obser­va­to­rio del Tei­de at Iza­ña in Tener­ife, at an alti­tude of 7,700 feet (2567 m), for the pur­pose of record­ing high-res­o­lu­tion spec­tra of the Zodi­a­cal Light.” Space.com describes the Zodia­cial Light as “a misty dif­fuse cone of light that appears in the west­ern sky after sun­set and in the east­ern sky before sun­rise,” one that has long tricked casu­al observers into “see­ing it as the first sign of morn­ing twi­light.” Astronomers now rec­og­nize it as “reflect­ed sun­light shin­ing on scat­tered space debris clus­tered most dense­ly near the sun.”

In his abstract, May also notes the unusu­al­ly long peri­od of study as 1970–2007, made pos­si­ble in part by the fact that lit­tle oth­er research had been done in this par­tic­u­lar sub­ject area dur­ing Queen’s reign on the charts and there­after. Still, he had catch­ing up to do, includ­ing obser­va­tion­al work in Tener­ife (as much of a hard­ship post­ing as that isn’t). Since being award­ed his doc­tor­ate, May’s sci­en­tif­ic activ­i­ties have con­tin­ued, as have his musi­cal ones and oth­er pur­suits besides, such as ani­mal-rights activism and stere­og­ra­phy. (Some­times these inter­sect: the 2017 pho­to­book Queen in 3‑D, for exam­ple, uses a VR view­ing device of May’s own design.) The next time you meet a young­ster dither­ing over whether to go into astro­physics or found one of the most suc­cess­ful rock bands of all time, point them to May’s exam­ple and let them know doing both isn’t with­out prece­dent.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gui­tarist Bri­an May Explains the Mak­ing of Queen’s Clas­sic Song, ‘Bohemi­an Rhap­sody’

Bri­an May’s Home­made Gui­tar, Made From Old Tables, Bike and Motor­cy­cle Parts & More

Stephen Hawking’s Ph.D. The­sis, “Prop­er­ties of Expand­ing Uni­vers­es,” Now Free to Read/Download Online

Watch 94 Free Lec­tures From the Great Cours­es: Dystopi­an Fic­tion, Astro­physics, Gui­tar Play­ing & Much More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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The Atlas of Space: Behold Brilliant Maps of Constellations, Asteroids, Planets & “Everything in the Solar System Bigger Than 10km”

in Astronomy, Design, Science | June 20th, 2019

A great deal remains to be learned about our solar sys­tem, but a great deal has already been learned about it as well. Yet huge amounts of data such as those pro­duced by out­er-space research so far can’t do much for us unless we can inter­pret them. Luck­i­ly, the age of the inter­net has made pos­si­ble unprece­dent­ed­ly easy access to data as well as unprece­dent­ed­ly easy dis­tri­b­u­tion of inter­pre­ta­tions of that data. Eleanor Lutz, a biol­o­gy grad­u­ate stu­dent at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton and the cre­ator of the sci­ence illus­tra­tion blog Table­top Whale, has tak­en advan­tage of both con­di­tions to wow her ever-grow­ing fan base with her maps of the realms beyond Earth.

“Atlas of Space, her lat­est project, is all about the solar sys­tem,” writes Wired’s Sara Har­ri­son. “She plumbed the depths of pub­licly avail­able data sets from agen­cies like NASA and the US Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey and used them to cre­ate vivid maps of con­stel­la­tions, aster­oids, and plan­ets. In one image, lumi­nes­cent bands of fuch­sia and aqua­ma­rine aster­oids swirl around the bright, white point of the Sun. In anoth­er, Earth seems to pul­sate as an ani­ma­tion of Arc­tic sea ice shows how it extends down the con­ti­nents dur­ing the win­ter and then retracts back to the poles in sum­mer.”

Lutz plans to release all the images she has cre­at­ed for her Atlas of Space over the next few weeks, along with instruc­tions teach­ing read­ers how to cre­ate sim­i­lar illus­tra­tions them­selves. In her intro­duc­to­ry post to the project, she promis­es “an ani­mat­ed map of the sea­sons on Earth, a map of Mars geol­o­gy, and a map of every­thing in the solar sys­tem big­ger than 10km.”

Lutz also briefly describes her plans to write about every­thing from “work­ing with Dig­i­tal Ele­va­tion Mod­els (DEMs) in Bash and Python” to “using the NASA HORIZONS orbital mechan­ics serv­er and scrap­ing inter­net data” to “updat­ing vin­tage illus­tra­tions and paint­ing in Pho­to­shop.” That last ele­ment has already made the project par­tic­u­lar­ly eye-catch­ing: you’ll notice the Atlas of Space pages pub­lished so far, “An Orbit Map of the Solar Sys­tem” and “A Topo­graph­ic Map of Mer­cury,” both pos­sess a strong retro design sen­si­bil­i­ty, though each of a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent kind. Levi Wal­ter Yag­gy would be proud — and no doubt aston­ished by just how much more infor­ma­tion we’ve man­aged to gath­er about the solar sys­tem over the past 130 years.

via Wired

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Strik­ing­ly Beau­ti­ful Maps & Charts That Fired the Imag­i­na­tion of Stu­dents in the 1880s

A Plan­e­tary Per­spec­tive: Tril­lions of Pic­tures of the Earth Avail­able Through Google Earth Engine

3D Map of Uni­verse Cap­tures 43,000 Galax­ies

A Mas­sive, Knit­ted Tapes­try of the Galaxy: Soft­ware Engi­neer Hacks a Knit­ting Machine & Cre­ates a Star Map Fea­tur­ing 88 Con­stel­la­tions

The Solar Sys­tem Quilt: In 1876, a Teacher Cre­ates a Hand­craft­ed Quilt to Use as a Teach­ing Aid in Her Astron­o­my Class

The Solar Sys­tem Drawn Amaz­ing­ly to Scale Across 7 Miles of Nevada’s Black Rock Desert

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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How the Universe Will Come to Its Explosive End: Trillions of Years Covered in 29 Timelapse Minutes

in Astronomy | June 18th, 2019

We all know that Earth won’t last for­ev­er. But noth­ing else in the uni­verse will either, and you can wit­ness the series of explo­sions, evap­o­ra­tions, expi­ra­tions, and oth­er kinds of cos­mic deaths that will con­sti­tute the next one tril­lion tril­lion tril­lion tril­lion tril­lion tril­lion tril­lion tril­lion years in the video above. Con­ve­nient­ly, it does­n’t take quite that long to watch: the time-lapse gets from just a few years into the future to the time at which the last black hole van­ish­es in under half an hour, dou­bling its own speed every five sec­onds. Not only does Earth go first, destroyed by the dying sun, but it hap­pens at the 3:20 mark.

Most of us have no idea what might pos­si­bly play out in the uni­verse over the next 26 or so time-lapsed min­utes. But more astro­physics-inclined minds like Bri­an Cox, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Sean Car­roll, Jan­na Levin, and Michio Kaku have put a great deal of thought into just that, and it is from their words that this video’s cre­ator John D. Boswell, known on Youtube as melodysheep, crafts its nar­ra­tion.

And what this for­mi­da­ble cast of sci­en­tists nar­rates resem­bles sequences from the biggest-bud­get sci­ence-fic­tion movies, which shows how far visu­al effects have come since A Brief His­to­ry of Time, Errol Mor­ris’ the­mat­i­cal­ly sim­i­lar 1991 doc­u­men­tary on the late Stephen Hawk­ing — a fig­ure who has also appeared in Boswell’s pre­vi­ous work.

How­ev­er it’s told, the nar­ra­tive remains the same: “the death of the sun, the end of all stars, pro­ton decay, zom­bie galax­ies, pos­si­ble future civ­i­liza­tions, explod­ing black holes, the effects of dark ener­gy, alter­nate uni­vers­es, the final fate of the cos­mos,” as Boswell puts it. “This is a pic­ture of the future as paint­ed by mod­ern sci­ence,” and one that “gives a pro­found per­spec­tive — that we are liv­ing inside the hot flash of the Big Bang, the per­fect moment to soak in the sights and sounds of a uni­verse in its glo­ry days, before it all fades away.” Thanks to the work of gen­er­a­tion upon gen­er­a­tion of sci­en­tists, as well as the work of cre­ators like Boswell who inter­pret their find­ings in far-reach­ing ways (this time-lapse of the future has already racked up near­ly 12.5 mil­lion views), we know how the sto­ry of the uni­verse ends. Now what will we do with the chap­ters grant­ed to us?

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

NASA Archive Col­lects Great Time-Lapse Videos of our Plan­et

Super­mas­sive Black Hole Shreds a Star, and You Get to Watch

Watch A Brief His­to­ry of Time, Errol Mor­ris’ Film About the Life & Work of Stephen Hawk­ing

The Very End of Time

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Johannes Kepler Theorized That Each Planet Sings a Song, Each in a Different Voice: Mars is a Tenor; Mercury, a Soprano; and Earth, an Alto

in Astronomy, Music, Science | May 24th, 2019

Johannes Kepler deter­mined just how the plan­ets of our solar sys­tem make their way around the sun. He pub­lished his inno­v­a­tive work on the sub­ject from 1609 to 1619, and in the final year of that decade he also came up with a the­o­ry that each plan­et sings a song, and each in a dif­fer­ent voice at that. Mars is a tenor, Mer­cury is a sopra­no, and Earth, as the BBC show QI (or Quite Inter­est­ing) recent­ly tweet­ed, “is an alto that sings two notes Mi and Fa, which Kepler read as ‘Mis­e­ri­am & Famem’, ‘mis­ery and famine’ ” — two phe­nom­e­na not unknown on Earth in Kepler’s time, even though the sci­en­tif­ic rev­o­lu­tion had already start­ed to change the way peo­ple lived.

Not all of the best minds of the sci­en­tif­ic rev­o­lu­tion thought pure­ly in terms of cal­cu­la­tion. The blog Thats­Maths describes Kepler’s mis­sion as explain­ing the solar sys­tem “in terms of divine har­mo­ny,” find­ing “a sys­tem of the world that was math­e­mat­i­cal­ly cor­rect and har­mon­i­cal­ly pleas­ing.” Tru­ly divine har­mo­ny could pre­sum­ably find its expres­sion in music, an idea that led Kepler to explain “plan­e­tary motions in terms of har­mon­ic rela­tion­ships, a scheme that he called the ‘song of the Earth.’ ”

Accord­ing to this scheme, “each plan­et emits a tone that varies in pitch as its dis­tance from the Sun varies from per­i­he­lion to aphe­lion and back” — that is, from the near­est they get to the sun to the far­thest they get from the sun and back — “pro­duc­ing a con­tin­u­ous glis­san­do of inter­me­di­ate tones, a ‘whistling pro­duced by fric­tion with the heav­en­ly light.’ ”

Kepler named the com­bined result “the music of the spheres,” but what does it sound like? Switzer­land-based cor­net­tist Bruce Dick­ey wants to give us a sense of it with Nature’s Whis­per­ing Secret, “a project for a CD record­ing explor­ing the ideas about music and cos­mol­o­gy of Johannes Kepler.” Demand­ing the musi­cian­ship of not just Dick­ey but com­pos­er Cal­liope Tsoupa­ki, singer Hana Blažíková, and a group of singers and instru­men­tal­ists from across Europe and Amer­i­ca as well, all “among the most dis­tin­guished musi­cians per­form­ing 16th-cen­tu­ry poly­phon­ic music today.” The Indiegogo cam­paign for this ambi­tious trib­ute to Kepler’s ideas at the inter­sec­tion of sci­ence and aes­thet­ics, which involves an album as well as a series of live per­for­mances into the year 2020, is on its very last day, so if you’d like to hear the music of the spheres for your­self, con­sid­er mak­ing a con­tri­bu­tion.

via Quite Inter­est­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Declas­si­fied, Eerie “Space Music” Heard Dur­ing the Apol­lo 10 Mis­sion (1969)

NASA Puts Online a Big Col­lec­tion of Space Sounds, and They’re Free to Down­load and Use

Relax with 8 Hours of Clas­si­cal Space Music: From Richard Strauss & Haydn, to Bri­an Eno, Philip Glass & Beyond

The Sound­track of the Uni­verse

Kepler, Galileo & Nos­tradamus in Col­or, on Google

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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How to Take a Picture of a Black Hole: Watch the 2017 Ted Talk by Katie Bouman, the MIT Grad Student Who Helped Take the Groundbreaking Photo

in Astronomy, Computer Science, Data, Gender | April 15th, 2019

What trig­gered the worst impuls­es of the Inter­net last week?

The world’s first pho­to of a black hole, which proved the pres­ence of troll life here on earth, and con­firms that female sci­en­tists, through no fault of their own, have a much longer way to go, baby.

If you want a taste, sort the com­ments on the two year old TED Talk, above, so they’re ordered  “newest first.”

Katie Bouman, soon-to-be assis­tant pro­fes­sor of com­put­ing and math­e­mat­i­cal sci­ences at the Cal­i­for­nia Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, was a PhD can­di­date at MIT two years ago, when she taped the talk, but she could’ve passed for a ner­vous high school­er com­pet­ing in the Nation­al Sci­ence Bowl finals, in clothes bor­rowed from Aunt Judy, who works at the bank.

The focus of her stud­ies were the ways in which emerg­ing com­pu­ta­tion­al meth­ods could help expand the bound­aries of inter­dis­ci­pli­nary imag­ing.

Pri­or to last week, I’m not sure how well I could have parsed the focus of her work had she not tak­en the time to help less STEM-inclined view­ers such as myself wrap our heads around her high­ly tech­ni­cal, then-whol­ly-the­o­ret­i­cal sub­ject.

What I know about black holes could still fit in a thim­ble, and in truth, my excite­ment about one being pho­tographed for the first time pales in com­par­i­son to my excite­ment about Game of Thrones return­ing to the air­waves.

For­tu­nate­ly, we’re not oblig­at­ed to be equal­ly turned on by the same inter­ests, an idea the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist Richard Feyn­man pro­mot­ed:

I’ve always been very one-sided about sci­ence and when I was younger I con­cen­trat­ed almost all my effort on it. I did­n’t have time to learn and I did­n’t have much patience with what’s called the human­i­ties, even though in the uni­ver­si­ty there were human­i­ties that you had to take. I tried my best to avoid some­how learn­ing any­thing and work­ing at it. It was only after­wards, when I got old­er, that I got more relaxed, that I’ve spread out a lit­tle bit. I’ve learned to draw and I read a lit­tle bit, but I’m real­ly still a very one-sided per­son and I don’t know a great deal. I have a lim­it­ed intel­li­gence and I use it in a par­tic­u­lar direc­tion.

I’m pret­ty sure my lack of pas­sion for sci­ence is not tied to my gen­der. Some of my best friends are guys who feel the same. (Some of them don’t like team sports either.)

But I could­n’t help but expe­ri­ence a wee thrill that this young woman, a sci­ence nerd who admit­ted­ly could’ve used a few the­ater nerd tips regard­ing relax­ation and pub­lic speak­ing, real­ized her dream—an hon­est to good­ness pho­to of a black hole just like the one she talked about in her TED Talk,  “How to take a pic­ture of a black hole.”

Bouman and the 200+ col­leagues she acknowl­edges and thanks at every oppor­tu­ni­ty, achieved their goal, not with an earth-sized cam­era but rather a net­work of linked tele­scopes, much as she had described two years ear­li­er, when she invoked dis­co balls, Mick Jag­ger, oranges, self­ies, and a jig­saw puz­zle in an effort to help peo­ple like me under­stand.

Look at that suck­er (or, more accu­rate­ly, its shad­ow!) That thing’s 500 mil­lion tril­lion kilo­me­ters from Earth!

(That’s much far­ther than King’s Land­ing is from Win­ter­fell.)

I’ll bet a lot of ele­men­tary sci­ence teach­ers, be they male, female, or non-bina­ry, are going to make sci­ence fun by hav­ing their stu­dents draw pic­tures of the pic­ture of the black hole.

If we could go back (or for­ward) in time, I can almost guar­an­tee that mine would be among the best because while I didn’t “get” sci­ence (or gym), I was a total art star with the crayons.

Then, crafty as Lord Petyr Bael­ish when pre­sen­ta­tion time rolled around, I would part­ner with a girl like Katie Bouman, who could explain the sci­ence with win­ning vig­or. She gen­uine­ly seems to embrace the idea that it “takes a vil­lage,” and that one’s fel­low vil­lagers should be cred­it­ed when­ev­er pos­si­ble.

(How did I draw the black hole, you ask? Hon­est­ly, it’s not that much hard­er than draw­ing a dough­nut. Now back to Katie!)

Alas, her pro­fes­sion­al warmth failed to reg­is­ter with legions of Inter­net trolls who began slim­ing her short­ly after a col­league at MIT shared a beam­ing snap­shot of her, tak­en, pre­sum­ably, with a reg­u­lar old phone as the black hole made its debut. That pic cement­ed her acci­den­tal sta­tus as the face of this project.

Note to the trolls—it was­n’t a dang self­ie.

“I’m so glad that every­one is as excit­ed as we are and peo­ple are find­ing our sto­ry inspi­ra­tional,’’ Bouman told The New York Times. “How­ev­er, the spot­light should be on the team and no indi­vid­ual per­son. Focus­ing on one per­son like this helps no one, includ­ing me.”

Although Bouman was a junior team mem­ber, she and oth­er grad stu­dents made major con­tri­bu­tions. She direct­ed the ver­i­fi­ca­tion of images, the selec­tion of imag­ing para­me­ters, and authored an imag­ing algo­rithm that researchers used in the cre­ation of three script­ed code pipelines from which the instant­ly-famous pic­ture was cob­bled togeth­er.

As Vin­cent Fish, a research sci­en­tist at MIT’s Haystack Obser­va­to­ry told CNN:

One of the insights Katie brought to our imag­ing group is that there are nat­ur­al images. Just think about the pho­tos you take with your cam­era phone—they have cer­tain prop­er­ties.… If you know what one pix­el is, you have a good guess as to what the pix­el is next to it.

Hey, that makes sense.

As The Verge’s sci­ence edi­tor, Mary Beth Grig­gs, points out, the rush to defame Bouman is of a piece with some of the non-vir­tu­al real­i­ties women in sci­ence face:

Part of the rea­son that some posters found Bouman imme­di­ate­ly sus­pi­cious had to do with her gen­der. Famous­ly, a num­ber of promi­nent men like dis­graced for­mer CERN physi­cist Alessan­dro Stru­mia have argued that women aren’t being dis­crim­i­nat­ed against in sci­ence — they sim­ply don’t like it, or don’t have the apti­tude for it. That argu­ment for­ti­fies a notion that women don’t belong in sci­ence, or can’t real­ly be doing the work. So women like Bouman must be fakes, this warped line of think­ing goes…

Even I, whose 7th grade sci­ence teacher tem­pered a bad grade on my report card by say­ing my inter­est in the­ater would like­ly serve me much bet­ter than any­thing I might eek from her class, know that just as many girls and women excel at sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, engi­neer­ing, and math as excel in the arts. (Some­times they excel at both!)

(And pow­er to every lit­tle boy with his sights set on nurs­ing, teach­ing, or bal­let!)

(How many black holes have the haters pho­tographed recent­ly?)

Grig­gs con­tin­ues:

Say­ing that she was part of a larg­er team doesn’t dimin­ish her work, or min­i­mize her involve­ment in what is already a his­to­ry-mak­ing project. High­light­ing the achieve­ments of a bril­liant, enthu­si­as­tic sci­en­tist does not dimin­ish the con­tri­bu­tions of the oth­er 214 peo­ple who worked on the project, either. But what it is doing is show­ing a dif­fer­ent mod­el for a sci­en­tist than the one most of us grew up with. That might mean a lot to some kids — maybe kids who look like her — mak­ing them excit­ed about study­ing the won­ders of the Uni­verse.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Women’s Hid­den Con­tri­bu­tions to Mod­ern Genet­ics Get Revealed by New Study: No Longer Will They Be Buried in the Foot­notes

New Aug­ment­ed Real­i­ty App Cel­e­brates Sto­ries of Women Typ­i­cal­ly Omit­ted from U.S. His­to­ry Text­books

Stephen Hawk­ing (RIP) Explains His Rev­o­lu­tion­ary The­o­ry of Black Holes with the Help of Chalk­board Ani­ma­tions

Watch a Star Get Devoured by a Super­mas­sive Black Hole

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City tonight for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Earthrise, Apollo 8’s Photo of Earth from Space, Turns 50: Download the Iconic Photograph from NASA

in Astronomy, History, Photography | December 28th, 2018

Just a lit­tle over fifty years ago, we did­n’t know what Earth looked like from space. Or rather, we had a decent idea what it looked like, but no clear col­or images of the sight exist­ed. 2001: A Space Odyssey pre­sent­ed a par­tic­u­lar­ly strik­ing vision of Earth from space in the spring of 1968, but it used visu­al effects and imag­i­na­tion (both to a still-impres­sive degree) to do so. Only on Christ­mas Eve of that year would Earth be gen­uine­ly pho­tographed from that kind of dis­tance, cap­tured with a Has­sel­blad by Bill Anders, lunar mod­ule pilot of NASA’s Apol­lo 8 mis­sion.

“Two days lat­er, the film was processed,” writes The Wash­ing­ton Post’s Chris­t­ian Dav­en­port, “and NASA released pho­to num­ber 68-H-1401 to the pub­lic with a news release that said: “This view of the ris­ing earth greet­ed the Apol­lo 8 astro­nauts as they came from behind the moon after the lunar orbit inser­tion burn.”

The image, called Earth­rise, went “as viral as any­thing could in 1968, a time that saw all sorts of pho­tographs leave their mark on the nation­al con­scious­ness, most of them scars.” Life mag­a­zine ran it with lines from U.S. poet lau­re­ate James Dick­ey: “Behold/ The blue plan­et steeped in its dream/ Of real­i­ty.”

It’s often said of icon­ic pho­tographs that they make their view­ers see their sub­jects in a new way, an effect Earth­rise must exem­pli­fy more clear­ly than any oth­er pic­ture. “The vast lone­li­ness is awe-inspir­ing,” said Apol­lo 8 com­mand mod­ule pilot Jim Lovell at the time, “and it makes you real­ize just what you have back there on Earth.” At the recent cel­e­bra­tion of the mis­sion’s 50th anniver­sary at the Wash­ing­ton Nation­al Cathe­dral, Anders remem­bered, “As I looked down at the Earth, which is about the size of your fist at arm’s length, I’m think­ing this is not a very big place. Why can’t we get along?”

You can down­load Earth­rise from NASA’s web site and learn more about the tak­ing of the pho­to from the video above, made for its 45th anniver­sary. Using all avail­able data on the mis­sion, includ­ing audio record­ings of the astro­nauts them­selves, the video pre­cise­ly re-cre­ates the cir­cum­stances under which Anders shot Earth­rise, for­ev­er pre­serv­ing a view made pos­si­ble by a roll of the space­craft exe­cut­ed by Apol­lo 8 com­man­der Frank Bor­man. To what extent their pho­to­graph­ic achieve­ment has con­vinced us all to get along remains debat­able, but has human­i­ty, since the day after Christ­mas 1968, ever thought about its blue plan­et in quite the same way as before?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Won­der, Thrill & Mean­ing of See­ing Earth from Space. Astro­nauts Reflect on The Big Blue Mar­ble

Coun­tries and Coast­lines: A Dra­mat­ic View of Earth from Out­er Space

What It Feels Like to Fly Over Plan­et Earth

The Beau­ty of Space Pho­tog­ra­phy

The Cap­ti­vat­ing Sto­ry Behind the Mak­ing of Ansel Adams’ Most Famous Pho­to­graph, Moon­rise, Her­nan­dez, New Mex­i­co

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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