Eclipses – A New Wall Paper Available

Check out the latest wallpaper, “Eclipses”.  Click on the image to go to the gallery.

A gas giant system experiences multiple eclipses.

A gas giant system experiences multiple eclipses.

 

With one moon and one star our eclipses are relatively simple, but consider a multi-star system or a planet with many moons and you will need a score card to keep track.

We will have two solar eclipses in 2015: a total eclipse on March 20th, and a partial eclipse on September 13th.  Since solar eclipses are followed shortly thereafter by lunar eclipses, there will also be two lunar eclipses in 2015: April 4th and September 28th. Check out NASA’s Eclipse website for more information on these celestial events.

Enjoy!

Till next time,

RC Davison

Wormhole to Destinations Unknown – New Image

Wormholes – those curious portals to the other side of the galaxy or universe.  More formerly known as an Einstein-Rosen bridge, they theoretically join two regions of space allowing one to traverse great distances instead of moving along the fabric of space.

The illustrations below shows this very well. Traveling from A to B in the conventional sense will get you there in time…

Traveling from planet A to planet B via flat space.

Traveling from planet A to planet B via flat space.

But, fold space by using a wormhole and you now have a much shorter path to cross to go from A to B.

Traveling from A to B via a wormhole is quicker.

Traveling from A to B via a wormhole is quicker.

The new wallpaper shows the mouth of an active wormhole from the point of view of a gas giant and its habitable moon in a nearby solar system.

Wallpaper - WormholeMore wallpapers here!

Enjoy!

RC Davison

Temple of the Sun – New Wallpaper Available

Orbital Maneuvers Wallpaper: Temple of the Sun

Temple of the Sun

Temple of the Sun
Who knows what may be found on a planet in the habitable zone around a not too distant star.  Blue sky, blue water, a temple paying homage to the local star that provides the energy for life on this planet.  A place we could call home.  It’s out there–somewhere, waiting for us to find it…

Click here for the main wallpaper page.

Till next time,

RC Davison

Blue Heron – A New Wallpaper

 Inspiration for my pictures comes from so many different places.  Blue Heron came one day in March wen I was attending an art exhibit of a very dear friend and AMAZING artist, Tatiana Rhinevault.  Tatiana had done this beautiful painting of a blue heron wading in a small backwater on the Hudson River.  Tatiana’s Blue Heron just pulled me in and I had to see if I could duplicate this wonderful image using Vue and GIMP.  After many, many hours, with countless tweaks, adjustments and renders I finally realized that I would not be able to replicate Tatiana’s artistic interpretation of this beautiful nature scene.  My end result is below.  If you follow the link above you can see Tatiana’s painting to compare.  I highly recommend you take a look at her website and enjoy the amazing skill and depth Tatiana has.  Unfortunately, the pictures of her paintings do not do justice to the originals.  They need to be seen in person.  Take a few minutes and check out her site.

Blue Heron - ThumbEnjoy!

Till next time,

RC Davison

One Step at a Time — New Wallpaper Available

Wallpaper - Pyramids of Egypt

One Step at a Time

Technology has been with us since early man formed the first stone tools.  We tend to forget that as we journey through our days with our cell phones, tablets, GPS and Internet–the state-of-the-art.  But, state-of-the-art is transitory, and tomorrow’s technology will make today’s look ancient.

Five thousand years ago, the ancient Egyptians were perfecting their state-of-the-art in the construction of buildings we marvel at today.  The precision and scope of what they did on the Giza Plateau with the Great Pyramid of Khufu amaze us today with all of our modern science and technology.  But, the Egyptians developed their technology by first building mounds for burial chambers, followed by single level structures — mestabas, which evolved into multi-level structures known as step pyramids, the Pyramid of Djoser is a great example, and the pinnacle of their achievements, the classic pyramids we see at Giza.

The image below celebrates that evolution, the intellect and the ingenuity of this ancient civilization.

Till next time,

RC Davison

 

Exile – A Lost Soul

With the current estimate that one out of every five stars in our Milky Way galaxy has an Earth-like planet in the habitable zone, we may be looking at a minimum of about 500 million planets in the galaxy that might harbor life of some sort.  This number is probably easily an order of magnitude higher or more if we consider planets on the fringe of the habitable zones and their moons.

Exile is about one poor sole in one such system that has been banished to a cold, wintery world where he can see his home planet rise every night — not the large lifeless moon, but the distant pale blue dot, flanked by its two moons.

Exile - Wallpaper from orbitalmaneuvers

Till next time,

RC Davison

715 Newly Verified Planets by the Planet Finder, Kepler

On February 26, 2014 NASA announced that the Kepler Space Telescope had found 715 new planets. This is 715 verified planets, not planet candidates, as has been released in the past. This brings the total of verified planets to almost 1700, while the number of planetary candidates is over 3800. These planets orbit around 305 stars and are all multi-planet solar systems.

This is significant because the techniques established to verify these planets bypassed the process where other ground/space based observatories would observe the stars associated with planetary candidates to independently verify the presence of orbiting planets. This was done by measuring the transits of the planets or the star’s “wobble” as the planets tug on the star during their orbit. (For more information on these techniques, see the blogs Finding Exoplanets Part 1: The Transit Method and Part 2 – It’s All About the Mass).

So what did the wizards behind the Kepler telescope come up with to speed up the process? Well, they present an amusing and unique analogy that works quite well when you understand the entire picture. Quoting from their press release*:

“This method can be likened to the behavior we know of lions and lionesses. In our imaginary savannah, the lions are the Kepler stars and the lionesses are the planet candidates. The lionesses would sometimes be observed grouped together whereas lions tend to roam on their own. If you see two lions it could be a lion and a lioness or it could be two lions. But if more than two large felines are gathered, then it is very likely to be a lion and his pride. Thus, through multiplicity the lioness can be reliably identified in much the same way multiple planet candidates can be found around the same star.”

So, if you observe a star and you see evidence of transits—multiple transits—you are very sure that you have a multi-planet solar system; its not random noise. This is because the other sources of error: electrical noise in the detectors, eclipsing binary stars (of which 2165 have been discovered at the time of this article), background eclipsing binary stars or optical ghosting tend to lead to single transit-like events, which would cause confusion in identifying a single planet orbiting the star. This ability to filter out the random noise that might obscure the data leads to a confidence rate of better than 99% for these 715 planets. This conclusion was arrived at after careful statistical analysis of 340 planetary systems, taking into consideration false alarms, false positives and noise in the data. (Check out the references below for links to the papers presented on this technique.)

Within this collection of planets we have four that orbit in the habitable zone of their parent star (meaning liquid water could exist on their surfaces) and are less than 2.5 times the size of Earth. An important thing to keep in mind is that these results come from only the first two years of Kepler data. There is over another year’s worth of data yet to be released on Kepler’s discoveries.

Unfortunately, Kepler ended its planet hunting mission last year due to failures of two reaction wheel controllers (out of 4 total, one being a backup) that are used to precisely point the telescope. Kepler served its main mission and was given an extension to keep planet hunting, but that ended in the spring of 2013 with the failure of the second reaction wheel. It’s interesting to note that having only two reaction wheels prevented Kepler from counteracting the force being placed on it by the Sun’s light pressure, causing it to be unable to lock onto the star it was observing. But, Kepler is not down and out yet as there is a proposal—K2—which will allow the spacecraft to continue its planet hunting to a degree as well as observe star clusters, active galaxies and supernovae.

More planets, more possibilities of life elsewhere in the Universe—as we know it or not! Can’t wait for the James Webb Space Telescope to get into space and come online. The better we can see, the more we can see!

I’ll leave you with a new wallpaper—Change of Season. It’s not too hard to imagine an extraterrestrial planet in some distant star system, with the right geological evolution and astronomical orientation, that its inhabitants have built their own version of Stonehenge to mark the change of seasons.

3D Wallpaper: Change of Season

Change of Season

Till next time,

RC Davison

References:

*Kepler Press Release: For more information, images and video about this topic

Science papers – Lissauer et al, 2014; Rowe et al, 2014

Orcas’ Moon – New Wallpaper Available

Are we the only creatures on this amazing planet that can appreciate the beauty of a full Moon floating above the horizon?  This thought was the seed for this wallpaper of a pod of orcas pausing to take in the view. 

Sophisticated animals, with complex societies and language, killer whales may just be able to appreciate the world around them.  Maybe someday we will be able share their thoughts on a rising Moon.

Check it out!

Orcas' watch a rising full moon

Orcas’ Moon

RC Davison