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Imagen de archivo reeditada y capturada el año 2017 en Fisterra (Galicia).
Cámara Canon 60D y objetivo 17-85/IS-USM. Editada con ACR y PS5
The Head of Transportation Design for NASA's 2047 Pathfinder 4 mission was a huge fan of early 21st Century Space Opera movies...
Built for the Pimp Rey's Speeder contest.
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Una nasa es un arte de pesca tradicional que consiste en un cesto de forma cilíndrica hecho de red y un esqueleto de madera con una especie de embudo dirigido hacia dentro en su base.
Se utiliza para la pesca de mariscos (centollo, nécora, bogavante...) y de cefalópodos (pulpo).
Telling NASA's Tales With Hollywood's Tools
Space Center Uses Pixar's Palette To Artfully Explain Scientific Data
By Michael S. Rosenwald
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 21, 2006; D01
[We are lucky to be working with world class data visualizers and animators. This article in the Washington Post is one of the best print stories I've seen on the folks who are on the front lines of translating our science and making it accessible to our many audiences.]
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/20/...
Every once in a while when a new movie with mind-blowing special effects or oh-my-gosh-it-looked-so-real animation opens, a nondescript office at NASA Goddard Space Center in Greenbelt will mysteriously empty of employees during matinee hours.
Before an investigation is launched into the whereabouts of these workers -- particularly, say, around last year's opening of "Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith" -- understand that they are not blowing off work. The absentee employees are animators, NASA staffers and contractors who use the same software Pixar Animation Studios uses to tell stories about talking cars to instead tell stories about the Earth. They just want to see what their counterparts in Hollywood have been up to.
There is the occasional did-you-see-that elbow nudge, but in their case it's about craft, not cinematic delight, said Horace Mitchell, project manager at the space center's scientific visualization studio. Mitchell is a NASA employee, but the studio is staffed primarily by animators working for Global Science & Technology Inc., a government contractor in Greenbelt. The company uses the Hollywood software, including Pixar's RenderMan and Autodesk Inc.'s Maya, to translate complicated data into animated movies that illustrate what is happening in and around Earth. The videos often end up on the evening news.
The crucial difference in NASA's use of the software is that Hollywood uses it to spin inspiring, happy-ending stories about love and courage and friendship and hope, while the animators in Greenbelt are often telling stories about bad things happening in the atmosphere, such as last year's hurricane season. In their chilling short film "27 Storms: Arlene to Zeta," set to Vincenzo Bellini's eerie music, viewers can watch the ocean heat up, helping fuel one storm after another -- thanks to the same Pixar software used in the upcoming version of "Charlotte's Web."
NASA oceanographer Gene Carl Feldman frequently collaborates with the Global Science studio. He studies the ocean from space.
"Visualization is that link between the flood of data coming down from space and the ability of the human mind to interpret it," Feldman said. "That's the crux of the story. Better than most other groups in the world, they are able to take this fire hose of data coming down and turn it into images -- visual animation -- that then allows the general public to see this data in ways their brains can interpret and study."
The Hollywoodization of NASA data is in part the result of Pixar's success in creating real-life worlds from fantasy stories. People have come to expect that even the most fantastical of ideas -- a talking, curmudgeonly Mr. Potato Head -- can look and feel exceedingly real. "They don't expect to see crudity," Mitchell said. "They expect to see sophistication because they see it everywhere. In order for us to tell the story, we have to be sophisticated about telling stories and we have to use sophisticated technology to tell them."
Pixar was spun off from George Lucas's film company, and its early days were spent selling animation software and hardware -- a way to pay the bills until computer technology caught up with the firm's vision of making the incredibly life-like films that it produces today.
Today, anyone can purchase versions of RenderMan online, for $995 to $3,500.
Global Science, a private company that employs about 250 people, is definitely not a movie studio. It was founded in 1991 by Chieh-san Cheng, a former employee of an aerospace and technology company with advanced degrees in technical management and meteorology. Global Science provides services in applied science and research, geospatial standards, engineering services, and information technology. The firm's contract with NASA is a small part of its business, contributing about $650,000 a year to about $45 million in revenue.
Global Science and Pixar know about each other, but interaction between the staffs is generally limited to animation conferences and trade shows. But the Global Science staff does feel a strong bond with Pixar, particularly when watching one of its movies.
Jim Williams, a Global Science animator, said, "I'll go into it thinking I'm going to look at the technical stuff and then I'll get completely sucked into the story."
This happened during Pixar's recent hit, "Cars."
"I'm watching it, I'm totally into the story, and they get to the end and they go into that stadium, and there's tens of thousands of cars in there and I drop out of the story and think, 'Wow, that must have been a pain in the butt to get that right.' And then I'm back into the story," he said.
The difference between the storylines is that Pixar is trying to get laughing cars right and Global Science is trying to get the atmosphere right. The way in which Global Science uses RenderMan is not easy. Here's one way of looking at it: This article has been typed on a word processor. The computer received the data -- in this case, they looked like letters -- and displayed them on a screen. The lines were long, containing dozens of words. Those words needed to appear in the newspaper, and to do that a graphic designer used another program to render and squeeze the words into narrow columns of newsprint, with black type, a font, and italics , and so forth so the words appear in the paper as they do now. That's essentially what RenderMan does for data -- whether it be information about Buzz Lightyear's appearance or atmospheric models of hurricanes. RenderMan is the mechanism by which data are translated. Another program, Maya, acts as the word processor.
Global Science translates scientific data this way. Recently, one of its animators sat behind a computer monitor in a dark room with an image that could have appeared as a backdrop in a Van Gogh painting. But it was a depiction of aerosols moving across the atmosphere, a way of illustrating air quality. Yellow represented dust, the green was sulfates produced by humans, the blue was sea salt. Altogether, it was sort of beautiful but apparently not good news for the atmosphere.
Like their Hollywood counterparts, the Global Science animators typically refer to their finished products as releases, but the scripts are composed of data and the script writers are some of the world's most brilliant scientists. The creative process generally works like this: A scientist or a public affairs officer will ask the animators to illustrate a concept or data set. It can be as simple as ocean temperatures or as complicated as a collection of satellite images. A discussion with the scientific team and public affairs officer ensues over the best way to illustrate the data, and the animators get to work.
Feldman, the NASA oceanographer, studies oceans from space because, as he said: "Oceans are really, really, really big and they change very, very quickly. You can't track that from a ship. What a satellite sees in a minute would take a ship a decade." Feldman is particularly interested in the relationship between the changing environment and ocean life, which he pursues by studying the first level of life in the ocean, or microscopic plants, through ocean color.
The only problem is that satellites collect a very large amount of complicated data. The visualization studio helps him make sense of it. Feldman has made animations of what happened to the ocean during the transition between El Niño and La Niña -- "it was the biggest phytoplankton bloom in the world ever observed," he said. He has animated Lake Michigan's microscopic plant blooms and a dust storm the size of Spain that blew across the ocean in the past few years. He has animated autumn in Boston, which roughly translates into, as he put it, "how life follows the sun."
If Cheng, chief executive of Global Science, has his way, NASA scientists wouldn't be the only people relying on his firm's handling of Hollywood software to explain complicated subjects. Cheng would like to use the software to better explain the human body to doctors. He said the company is finalizing plans for a medical-imaging division and is exploring the possibility of a partnership with Maryland universities.
"What we could do is use movie techniques to give the doctor and medical staff more dynamic and accurate images to make a diagnosis," he said.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
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for some reason or another NASA is prepared to spend billions hoping to find some signs of life far away, but no need to go far to find some life where you don't expect it.....NASA would be ecstatic with such a MARS shot....
Rugged Offroad Adventure Mobile
Everyone wanted a go when the rep brought the ROAM demonstrator to the base.
OYEZ, OYEZ, LA NASA VOUS L'ANNONCE…
Suspense et excitation !
L'agence américaine préparait le spectacle depuis des jours et même des semaines en diffusant une bande-annonce digne d'un show hollywoodien pour préparer les spectateurs à une « simple » annonce de l'équipage d'Artemis II.
Bien entendu, il s'agit d'un SYMBOLE !
Les quatre astronautes seront les premiers depuis Apollo 17 à partir aussi loin autour de notre satellite naturel, et ils représentent pour la NASA un espoir renouvelé autant que l'un des grands points d'orgue d'un programme qui a mis plus d'une décennie à voir le jour.
Cette « nouvelle conquête lunaire » doit d'abord marquer les esprits et bénéficier de l'appui politique et du grand public … Eh oui !!!
D'où ce côté spectacle assumé !
L'ensemble des astronautes présents à Houston se trouvait sur scène, y compris ceux des pays partenaires en formation.
Il y avait aussi les dirigeants de la NASA et François-Philippe Champagne, le pétillant ministre canadien en charge du spatial dans le gouvernement en place.
En effet, cet équipage est bien composé de trois membres de la NASA et d'un Canadien. On retrouve donc Reid Wiseman (commandant), Victor Glover (pilote), Christina Koch (spécialiste de mission) et le Canadien Jeremy Hansen (spécialiste de mission) 😉
Bonne journée les artistes :D
**********************************************************************************
HEAR, HEAR, NASA ANNOUNCES IT TO YOU...
Suspense and excitement!
The American agency had been preparing the show for days and even weeks by releasing a trailer worthy of a Hollywood show to prepare viewers for a "simple" announcement from the crew of Artemis II.
Of course, it is a symbol!
The four astronauts will be the first since Apollo 17 to travel this far around our natural satellite, and they represent renewed hope for NASA as much as one of the great culmination points of a program that has taken more than a decade to come.
This “new lunar conquest” must first mark the spirits and benefit from the political support and the general public… Yes!!!
Hence this assumed side of the show!
All the astronauts present in Houston were on stage, including those of the partner countries in training.
There were also the leaders of NASA and François-Philippe Champagne, the sparkling Canadian minister in charge of space in the government in place.
Indeed, this crew is indeed made up of three NASA members and a Canadian. So we find Reid Wiseman (commander), Victor Glover (pilot), Christina Koch (mission specialist) and Canadian Jeremy Hansen (mission specialist) 😉
Good day artists :D
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory is a federally funded research and development center in La Cañada Flintridge, California, Crescenta Valley, United States. Founded in 1936 by California Institute of Technology researchers, the laboratory is now owned and sponsored by NASA and administered and managed by Caltech. They do offer tours to the public.
{Sharing the Knowledge 4.14.26}
Location B. Goyedhu
This place is built by the youth of this small community of 600 people. Maintained by The Organization for youths in this island (Goyedhoo Zuvaanunnge Jamiyya). This place is the islands social centre. And this place was named NaSa because of the mocking words of the elders. They Called it a Naaseege (whore house).
Inside is equipped with Cable TV. Chess Games. etc
Clustered at the center of this image are six brilliant spots of light, four of them creating a circle around a central pair. Appearances can be deceiving, however, as this formation is not composed of six individual galaxies, but is actually two separate galaxies and one distant quasar imaged four times. Data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope also indicates that there is a seventh spot of light in the very center, which is a rare fifth image of the distant quasar. This rare phenomenon is the result of the two central galaxies, which are in the foreground, acting as a lens.
The four bright points around the galaxy pair, and the fainter one in the very center, are in fact five separate images of a single quasar (known as 2M1310-1714), an extremely luminous but distant object. The reason we see this quintuple effect is a phenomenon called gravitational lensing. Gravitational lensing occurs when a celestial object with an enormous amount of mass – such as a pair of galaxies – causes the fabric of space to warp. When light from a distant object travels through that gravitationally warped space, it is magnified and bent around the huge mass. This allows humans here on Earth to observe multiple, magnified images of the far-away source. The quasar in this image actually lies farther away from Earth than the pair of galaxies. The galaxy pair’s enormous mass bent and magnified the light from the distant quasar, giving the incredible appearance that the galaxies are surrounded by four quasars – when in reality, a single quasar lies far beyond them!
Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) imaged the trio in spectacular detail. It was installed on Hubble in 2009 during Hubble Servicing Mission 4, Hubble’s final servicing mission. WFC3 continues to provide both top-quality data and fantastic images 12 years after its installation.
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, T. Treu; Acknowledgment: J. Schmidt
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.
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What's happening to this spiral galaxy? Just a few hundred million years ago, NGC 2936, the upper of the two large galaxies shown, was likely a normal spiral galaxy -- spinning, creating stars -- and minding its own business. But then it got too close to the massive elliptical galaxy NGC 2937 below and took a dive. Dubbed the Porpoise Galaxy for its iconic shape, NGC 2936 is not only being deflected but also being distorted by the close gravitational interaction. A burst of young blue stars forms the nose of the porpoise toward the right of the upper galaxy, while the center of the spiral appears as an eye. Alternatively, the galaxy pair, together known as Arp 142, look to some like a penguin protecting an egg. Either way, intricate dark dust lanes and bright blue star streams trail the troubled galaxy to the lower right. The featured re-processed image showing Arp 142 in unprecedented detail was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope last year. Arp 142 lies about 300 million light years away toward the constellation, coincidently, of the Water Snake (Hydra). In a billion years or so the two galaxies will likely merge into one larger galaxy.
Image credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble, HLA
A multitude of swirling clouds in Jupiter's dynamic North North Temperate Belt is captured in this image from NASA's Juno spacecraft. Appearing in the scene are several bright-white “pop-up” clouds as well as an anticyclonic storm, known as a white oval.
This color-enhanced image was taken at 4:58 p.m. EDT on Oct. 29, 2018, as the spacecraft performed its 16th close flyby of Jupiter. At the time, Juno was about 4,400 miles from the planet's cloud tops, at a latitude of approximately 40 degrees north.
Citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran created this image using data from the spacecraft's JunoCam imager.
Image Credit: Enhanced image by Gerald Eichstädt and Sean Doran (CC BY-NC-SA) based on images provided courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS
NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with the Orion spacecraft aboard is seen atop a mobile launcher at Launch Complex 39B, Thursday, April 7, 2022, as the Artemis I launch team prepares for the next attempt of the wet dress rehearsal test at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Image Credit: NASA
#MoontoMars #NASAMarshall #nasasls #artemis #NASA
I did not take these photos which came from the NASA website from Mexico during the eclipse April 8/24 . I stitched them together in Photoshop to demonstrate this magnificent event. I just wish I could have been there to see it. The next eclipses in North America are in 2044 and 2045 when I will be in my mid-nineties!!!
Listen to Bonny Tyler's song: Total Eclipse of the Heart
Galaxies are well known as the birthplaces of stars and planets thanks to the overwhelmingly large amount of dust and gas within them. Over time, cold gas coalesces into molecular clouds, leading to the further emergence of star-forming regions.
This image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope depicts a fantastic new class of star-forming nursery, known as Free-floating Evaporating Gaseous Globules, or frEGGs for short. This object, known as J025027.7+600849, is located in the constellation of Cassiopeia.
When a massive new star (or stars) starts to shine while still within the cool molecular cloud from which it formed, its energetic radiation can ionise the cloud’s hydrogen and create a large, hot bubble of ionised gas. Amazingly, located within this bubble of hot gas around a nearby massive star are the frEGGs: dark compact globules of dust and gas, some of which are also giving birth to low-mass stars. The boundary between the cool, dusty frEGG and hot gas bubble is seen as the glowing purple/blue edges in this fascinating image.
Learning more about these odd objects can help astronomers understand how stars like our Sun form under external influences. In fact, our Sun may have even been born in a frEGG!
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Sahai; CC BY 4.0
NASA image captured September 26, 2011
Many aurora appear green, but sometimes — as in this image from the International Space Station — other colors such as red can appear. The colors depend on which atoms are causing the splash of light seen in the aurora. In most cases, the light comes when a charged particle sweeps in from the solar wind and collides with an oxygen atom in Earth’s atmosphere. This produces a green photon, so most aurora appear green. However, lower-energy oxygen collisions as well as collisions with nitrogen atoms can produce red photons -- so sometimes aurora also show a red band as seen here.
Karen Fox
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Credit: NASA
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.
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By pushing NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to its limits, an international team of astronomers has shattered the cosmic distance record by measuring the farthest galaxy ever seen in the universe. This surprisingly bright infant galaxy, named GN-z11, is seen as it was 13.4 billion years in the past, just 400 million years after the Big Bang. GN-z11 is located in the direction of the constellation of Ursa Major.
Read more: go.nasa.gov/1oSqHad
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.
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At first glance, the galaxy NGC 4151 looks like an average spiral. Examine its center more closely, though, and you can spot a bright smudge that stands out from the softer glow around it. That point of light marks the location of a supermassive black hole weighing about 40 million times as much as our Sun.
Astronomers will use NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to measure that black hole’s mass. The result might seem like a piece of trivia, but its mass determines how a black hole feeds and affects the surrounding galaxy. And since most galaxies contain a supermassive black hole, learning about this nearby galaxy will improve our understanding of many galaxies across the cosmos.
Image credit: NASA, ESA, and J. DePasquale (STScI)
Thanks to Jesssica Truscott for this image:
faestock.deviantart.com/art/Sophia-Female-Stock-Reference...
Thanks to NASA for elements of this image.
A fjord in southern Greenland, as seen during Operation IceBridge's last flight of the 2017 Arctic campaign, on May 12, 2017. This final full science flight, ICESat-2 South, was designed along the ground tracks of NASA’s upcoming Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2), to fill in a gap in altimetry coverage of central southern Greenland.
Supporting ICESat-2, which is scheduled to launch in 2018, is one of the primary goals for Operation IceBridge. But the large volumes of data on Arctic sea and land ice that IceBridge has collected during its nine years of operations there have also enabled scientific discoveries ranging from the first map showing what parts of the bottom of the massive Greenland Ice Sheet are thawed, to improvements in snowfall accumulation models for all of Greenland. IceBridge has produced unprecedented three-dimensional views of Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets, providing scientists with valuable data on how polar ice is changing in a warming world.
Image credit: NASA/John Sonntag
NASA engineers load a structural test version of the Orion Stage Adapter for NASA's Space Launch System onto NASA’s Super Guppy Aircraft at the Redstone Arsenal Airfield in Huntsville, Alabama, for delivery to Lockheed Martin in Denver. The OSA connects NASA's Orion spacecraft to the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion System, which will give the spacecraft its big, in-space boost to fly around the moon in its first integrated flight with SLS. Built at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, the OSA was used in integrated structural testing for the top of the SLS rocket and will be used in similar testing with Orion at Lockheed. The Guppy has a cargo compartment that is 25 feet tall, 25 feet wide and 111 feet long and can carry up to 24 tons. The aircraft has a unique hinged nose that can open 110 degrees, allowing large pieces of cargo to be loaded and unloaded from the front.
Image credits: NASA/MSFC/Emmett Given
In March 2014, a team of scientists returned to the Arctic with NASA’s P-3 aircraft to continue Operation IceBridge, a multi-year aerial survey of polar ice. IceBridge is designed to maintain the continuity of measurements between NASA’s Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat), which stopped functioning in 2009, and its successor, ICESat-2, which is scheduled for launch in 2017.
The first science flight of this year’s campaign occurred on March 12, with the P-3 taking off from Thule Air Base in Greenland to survey sea ice over the Fram Strait. The belly of the plane was packed with radars, altimeters, gravimeters, and an array of sensors designed to yield a three-dimensional view of the ice. Scientists on the plane also had less exotic sensors with them: cameras. Michael Studinger, the IceBridge project scientist, captured this photograph of the Moon and the glow of morning sunlight on snow-covered peaks in northeastern Greenland.
Photograph by Michael Studinger. Caption by Adam Voiland, with information from George Hale.
Credit: NASA Earth Observatory
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.
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The easternmost edge of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot and surrounding south tropical disturbance are captured in this image from NASA’s Juno spacecraft. At left, wispy tendrils from the Red Spot give the atmosphere a layered appearance as they partially obscure cloud features below.
Jupiter's appearance is a tapestry of vivid colors and swirling atmospheric vortices. Many aspects of the planet’s atmosphere are still a mystery. For example, the origin of individual storms or churning cloud features is unknown. By studying Jupiter’s weather up close for the first time, Juno is helping researchers better understand how atmospheres work in general – including our own. What we learn about Jupiter’s atmosphere will also help scientists understand how gas-giant planets work in general, including those now being discovered beyond our solar system.
This color-enhanced image was taken at 3:01 a.m. PDT on April 1, 2018 (6:01 a.m. EDT), as the spacecraft performed its 12th close flyby of Jupiter. At the time, Juno was about 7,900 miles (12,750 kilometers) from the planet's cloud tops, above a southern latitude of approximately 26 degrees.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Brian Swift/Kevin M. Gill
NASA's Gulfstream made a stop at Glasgow for fuel and crew change en-route from Kazakhstan to Houston on the 6th April. Carrying Astronaut Loral O'Hara who returned to Earth earlier that day after a six-month research mission aboard the International Space Station.
NASA
Gulfstream Aerospace GV
N95NA
Glasgow Airport, Scotland
6th April 2024