Yet another reason I wish I could be a photographer. Well, whenever I start earning some real money I'll take it up as a more serious hobby. My camera just doesn't quite have the kinda power to do really cool stuff.



The image above is one of 1500 'astrophotographs' that Trevor Paglen has taken. What is it? A satellite which doesn't officially exist. I'm not sure if I'm impressed that he's so cool or disappointed that 'black ops' could be picked up by a civilian with a camera. Granted, he seems to be pretty amazing, but a civilian nonetheless.

Definitely read the story off Wired, it's pretty amazing. I know that satellites have solar cells by which they are powered, and those are fairly reflective, but I had no idea it left it so brightly visible. That's star bright; well not really, because it's a hell of a lot closer, but nonetheless.

Astronomy is cool, that's another expensive hobby I'll pick up someday.

Godspeed.

[Comments: 0] [Tags: technology, space, art]

I've been using Twitter recently. I'm really not sure what the appeal is, but I enjoy it. I came across an article from The Daily Galaxy about how the Phoenix Mars Lander is Twittering from the moon.



NASA gets major points for this one. Not only for keeping with the times and embracing things like Twitter, but for the brilliance of it. They're not dully writing about how the Phoenix is doing, but they're actually writing from the perspective of the lander. When referring to NASA they talk about them in the 3rd person. Here are two examples:

"I'm sending about 116 Mb of data home each day (over 100 images plus other data), transmitting 128 kbps"

"Sci team is done with today's news briefing. They'll be back on the clock to start the Martian work shift at 9:30pm PDT. Mars time is rough."



Well played NASA, well played.

Photo: NASA
Photo: Flickr

Godspeed.

[Comments: 0] [Tags: space, technology, techy tuesday, twitter]