Communism is always dark

Look at Cuba. So dark.

So much light

4, yes. And here?

Each speck a galaxy, some nearly as old as the universe, hundreds of billions of them, all looking something like

Each galaxy containing billions of stars, and each star powered by fusion - the collision of atoms which produces just about everything.

Some of this we call light, and bless it with sight, and are defined by it.

Tiny Worlds

Behold Saturn in her absolute magnificence. There are much larger pictures available on the Internet, fans, than here. Seek them out if you need a new desktop.

Look just outside Saturn's brightest inner rings at 9:15 o'clock  - there is a white dot. That white dot is Earth, and that dot contains our entire species, now, then, and seemingly forever.

We regress, while we know such wonders await us.


Blame Republicans.

In search of color in space

Not my shot - I wish. I've been looking for the Northern Lights for years, but never caught a glimpse. I'm pretty far North, but not far enough. I might have to travel to Iceland one day to remedy this - seeing colors dance across the sky is the kind of religious experience I want to try.


That's the ISS streaking overhead, with 6 people on board living and working in space. And here's what the Northern Lights look like from the ISS:

As you can see, the Northern Lights are a thin band of radiation at the edge of space. This is actual solar matter that has slammed into Earth's magnetosphere and spiraled down towards the Poles, producing the lights as the solar matter strikes the highest portions of the atmosphere.

Magic!

Just another Burj

You're yesterday's news, Burj al Arab.

Such is the fate of most Gulf buildings within a few short years. Spectacular has beens.

Mecca Vegas

Mecca in 1917. A world ago, as that world was directly connected to 2000 years and more of history. Whereas what's happened since is brand new.

Decadence. Luxurious wealth. Super technology. Welcome to Mecca 2013.

I'm sure the construction you see on the right has come far closer to completion since this picture was taken, if you can imagine it - another gaudy tower rising high in the sky.

There's malls in that big building, by the way. Shopping, at Mecca.

Tower Truths

I owe much to this tower, this Empire State Building. If not for it, I would not be in New Gondolin. So here's to you, the Original Tower (OT):

LADEE to space. To the moon, in fact.

Flying on Sunshine

A real pic, of a plane flying in front of a solar observation.

Behold the sun.

It's like Van Gogh made the basic unit of our existence - stars.

Letting Go

I'm not sure if this is a Buddhist tradition, or an Indian tradition, but regardless, it's beautiful. Little candles that create fragile balloons which float off into the sky (probably landing and starting brush fires).

We are little candles that float in this world, for a time. This world is a little candle that floats in space, for a time. We're all just points of light, floating.

Reality is an Illusion

It appears the stars are spinning through the night. There's nothing your senses can detect that says otherwise. You also know the sun moves, and have built a monument to showcase this movement - every Winter and Summer the sun will shine precisely so.

But this is all illusion.

It is we who are spinning, though you could never tell - do you feel like you're spinning at a thousand miles an hour?

So here's the amusing truth of it: You must have faith that science is true, or at least is the path of truth. That it is not the stars or sun spinning, but us, goes against your common sense. It goes against all intuition. It goes against our language - we say the sun rises and sets, when in truth it does no such thing. But you can't tell, you can't feel or see or hear the Earth whirling around in space.

And so you must have faith. In Science. Amen.

Orbital

It's an orbit joke - right? Say hey have you heard of the rogue captured? Jah, it's a shame.

Big Sis

Say hi to our big Sister, the Sun. And it is our Sister (or Brother if you like) and not our parent, as the Sun and the planets all formed from the same ginormous cloud of gas. The Sun took up most of that cloud, but every single planet, moon, comet and asteroid came from the same cloud. Even you, roundaboutly.

Like all "things" - stars and planets and you included - the Sun is the result of a series of reactions held in balance. In the case of a star, this balance is composed of the inward pressure of gravity, and the outward pressure of fusion. As such, the heart of a star is quite small compared to its overall size, thanks to this simple process:

Fusion. Just a couple of atoms bouncing off one another with enough energy (because of the inward pressure of gravity) and kabloom! Fusion, the heart of a star, and thus the heart of all life. Fusion releases enormous amounts of energy, and that energy is the star, and all its light, in all frequencies.

These frequencies are the electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves to microwaves to visible light - what we see - to ultraviolet, x-rays, and finally gamma rays. All seen here. Each frequency reveals different information, and thus astronomers use a variety of detection methods to learn not only about the sun, but everything.

We exist in a living miracle. It's pretty cool.

Eyes of a Robot

It's cool visuals, but not realistic. There's no way we could ever smash all the cameras they'll deploy. In the sky, on the sides of buildings, on street poles, on power lines, etc. Drones flying overhead. Satellites far above. Cameras everywhere.

Curiosity, on Mars. Not sure how this photo is made, since Curiosity is all alone on Mars.

Stuff in the Sky

Moonrise! Bright as a star. Fun fact to ponder - the light from the Moon is reflected light from the Sun. This light was created in the center of the Sun millions of years ago, finally escaped, streamed across space, hit the moon and bounced off, right into your eye. Where it bounces off again, but the energy is translated by your brain as... Moonlight.

The ISS, racing across the sky. There's six people up in there! Also, that sure looks like the Northern Lights, but I didn't see it with my eyes. So that's either a trick of light and clouds, or the Northern Lights can appear below my vision's threshold, but can show up on a longer exposure.

Moonset, an hour after an August Sunset. Fun project if you have a view of the Western horizon and some time - note how Moonset shifts over the year. You might be surprised!

All photos, once again, Redshirt Inc. Click for big! Prints available! I also can DJ weddings and Bar Mitzvahs.

Stone Age Future

Wind and Moon and Star is all I need to power my crystal - what about you?

All the jazz you need is straight above.

All these photos are mine, by the by. But I offer them up to you, tonight.

What if?

There's not enough words in the world to describe all the fucked up shit that has and will go down.

Keep Ur fires burning. Know that I burn with you, and am taking pictures.

Smile!

Life is the prize, you fool.

From a certain point of view

The Devil's Ring. Not as pretty as advertised.

You've been swimming in lies since the day you were born, no fault of your own.

Like the Arabian Batman.

A new light upon the world.

Future Fashions

We're in the Brave New World, friends, and the times demand a new fashion sense. Tired of being recorded everywhere you go? Try on the Infrared LED hat! Invisible to people, but blinding to cameras. Looking for more anti-drone clothes?

Conceal your face or upper torso from the prying eyes of the drones no doubt flying overhead as you read this. Here's some examples:

Keep your heat signature to yourself!

And the latest in anti-AI trends - makeup masks! These styles are designed to throw off facial recognition software that is being used more and more often. More examples:

As you can see, the idea is to confuse the software by asymmetrical designs - and don't forget the hairstyle too. Sadly though, the makeup tricks will only work so long, until a better generation of software comes along and foils this simple, and fashionable trick.

Also, and perhaps more importantly: Looks like the future!

Everything is Information

Think about it, really. Stop whatever it is you're doing (when you read the end of this paragraph), and think of this: Everything you see, touch, hear, know, think, remember, feel, is but some form of information. But more! Everything that is or could ever be - every atom, every molecular gas cloud, every star, every planet and person and even dog that has ever or will ever live is but a collection of information - ones and zeroes. Dots and dashes. Numbers on scales. Literally. Consider vision - an important human sense. Witness above how the human eye gathers light. Once focused, it strikes a collection of differentiated cells of the optic nerve, and that nerve transmits data to the brain. The data? Lightwave frequencies. The brain takes this data and transforms it into red, or green, or blue, or some combination thereof, and that in turn is what we see. And remember. It's a wicked cool trick!

Colors exist because the material through which light passes and strikes differs. Water is different than stone, a tree different than a car. Low different than high, hot different than cold, and so on. These differences give birth to all color, as the light is reflected, refracted, blocked, twisted, or otherwise changed in different ways based on the conditions. Above you see the spectrum in part, based on the density, temperature, and speed of the water, coupled with the differing angles of light. Below,

an amalgamation of movie poster colors by year - oldest at the top. Notice the color shift! And consider it - you see this shift through a screen over the internet, clearly nothing but data which comes alive with meaning in your mind. Hence!

False color astronomy. Defined as the addition of color where there was no color in the original image. This is an X-Ray shot, after all, and alas! We humans cannot see in X-Ray. The original image is greyscale, but in that scale is revealed the different frequencies of X-Rays, and if you follow the following logic: Low end of frequency equals red and high end equals blue than here you are - false color, but real in its way. It represents something very real and meaningful - especially meaningful to us, viewers of color, as we can tease meaning out of an image in color that we cannot in grey. For the best example:

The CMB: Cosmic Microwave Background. These globes represent the temperature of the UNIVERSE at approximately 300 million years old, which is a trifling number when you consider the estimated age of the Universe (14Billlion give or take). It is near this point that light first escaped the cosmic creation soup and traveled freely across space. And thus the map - different areas of hot and cold. Where the differences are like miniscule but enough over time to shape the infinity of galaxies that make up our ever expanding reality - red areas represent places of higher density and thus matter was attracted and here was built, everything. Blue less dense areas, now representing interstellar space, and it is vast and only getting ever vaster.

Once again, but numbers, which we translate into colors, shapes, texture, form. We are the creators of everything, since everything is but a bunch of numbers and long ass formulas n' shit. Consider in closing this image - our star, "The Sun"! In neutrinos, captured by a "telescope" buried deep under a mountain. You see, neutrinos don't care about our matter so much, and pass right through. Right now there are trillions upon trillions - seriously! - streaming right through you. Yet we found a way to measure them, and so here's the sun in False Color, neutrino style. Pretty dang sweet, science. Also too, eyes!

Finally, yay art! Previous post photo setup - not my picture, but alas I don't know who to credit. Whoever you are, rock on!

It's awesome what people can make out of all this information.