New Painting

My latest work...

HDTV movies of the Moon from Kaguya

The Japanese Kaguya (formerly Selene) mission has captured the first high-def movies from the Moon. Pretty impressive stuff, even if it does lose some of that high-def impact when it's a tiny little movie on your computer screen. Still pretty though.

The captions are all in Japanese, but the movie consists of two sequences:

The first sequence is a movie flying over the western region of Oceanus Procellarum. Starting point is approx. 25 N, 275 - 282 E and ending point is 49N, 275 - 283 E. The contrast of mare and highland are clearly recognized.

The second sequence is a scene flying over the north pole region. Starting point is approx. 66 N, 274 - 288 E and ending point is 87 N, 26 - 161 E. Kaguya is flying from the northern part of Oceanus Procellarum to the north pole. As it is in high latitude, incidence angle becomes lower and it makes shadows longer. Thanks to lower angle, we can see craters and other cobbly surface features very clearly.

These sequence captured on 31 Oct, 2007 (JST) with altitude of approximately 100 kilometers.

Congrats to our Japanese friends!

China's 1st lunar probe Chang'e-1 blasts off

Congrats to China on entering the lunar fray with the successful launch of their first lunar orbiter!

According to the Chinese English-language news, the orbiter is slated to develop "a three-dimensional survey of the Moon's surface", to analyze "the abundance and distribution of elements on lunar surface", to characterize the lunar regolith and the "powdery soil layer on the surface", and to explore the "circumstance between the Earth and the Moon."

This is supposed to be just China's first step in lunar exploration. A lunar lander or rover is slated for about 2012, and they are working towards sending humans in a time frame similar to our own. In fact, NASA's administrator Mike Griffin made headlines recently when he commented that they may beat us there. China though (at least officially) claims that this is not a race: "China will not embark on any lunar probe competition 'in any form with any country' and will 'share the results of its moon exploration with the whole world' in its pursuit of a policy of peaceful use of airspace, said a chief commander of the country's first lunar satellite project."

This made me laugh today...

Stephen Colbert writes an Op-Ed for the NY Times.

New Paintings

I finished three new paintings this week (well, 5 if you count the triptych as 3 separate ones, but that's not really fair). Here are the new ones, if you'd like to see more, check out my website.

NASA night at DPS

There is a great rundown of NASA night at the DPS (Division of Planetary Sciences) meeting up at the Planetary Society's Blog. Emily provides lots of insights into the new SMD crew at NASA headquarters; sounds like things have really turned around in the relationship between the community and HQ since Alan Stern took over.

This made me laugh today...

NASA announces plans to bring Wi-Fi to its Headquarters by 2017

I do enjoy the Onion, and I like that JSC is considered "NASA's Headquarters." Do you think the folks at HQs were ticked off by that? Of course, NASA will never make the 2017 goal - too many security issues. Just kidding, I do believe that our building has wi-fi, although the security is iron-clad such that I don't think that anybody can actually access it, but that's not the point right?