Lullaby for Grown-Ups - Manyfingers

Here's a delightful little film featuring the song Interlude by Manyfingers. The visuals are by Joost Van Veen. The song has a vibraphone feel, but is actually electronica with a nice melodic sense. I like some of the visual effects too, especially when it looks like the emulsion of the "film" seems to be dissolving. Cool!

Diversions for Insomniacs #5

If you suspect that your insomnia stems from unharnessed creative energy, then this is just the diversion for you. Here are three different online drawing programs to help release your inner artist:

1. ArtPad Digital Canvas
2. Your Studio
3. Jackson Pollock

These are all fun and easy to use. I did the night sky image above using Your Studio. It should be apparent that I'm no artist (there are some light and shadow issues going on), but I liked experimenting with the different tools and trying to make something that at least was recognizable.

So splatter some digital paint and see what you can create!

Lullaby for Grown-Ups - Jeff Wahl

Acoustic guitar can produce such a mellow, beautiful sound. The lullaby this week is an original song, appropriately titled Lullaby, written and performed by Jeff Wahl. I hope you enjoy this lovely, meditative performance.

The Night Sky's Wanderers - Pluto, then Home

Well, I wish I had some lovely images of Pluto for you. But Pluto is so distant, even the Hubble space telescope has a hard time getting a clear image. Below is the highest-resolution picture of Pluto we have.

Credit: Eliot Young (SwRI) et al./NASA

No, Pluto's not pixelated, but the brown coloring is true color. I did find clearer images, but as far as I could tell, they were artists' renderings. NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, launched in 2006, is on schedule to reach Pluto in 2015, so we can hope for some better images then.

Maybe you've heard that Pluto was demoted awhile ago and is now considered a dwarf planet. The decision was made by a relatively small number of astronomers, so I'm skeptical that it will stick. It seems that many people are protective of the solar system's smallest planet.

It's been quite a tour we've been on to our neighboring planets, but it's time to come home. Earth is usually our point of observation, but with all the spacecraft zipping around, both manned and unmanned, it's not surprising that we now have beautiful images of our own world. First up is the iconic Earthrise:

Credit: Apollo 8/NASA

Taken in 1968 by the Apollo 8 crew, this is the first image of Earth from space and was described by photographer Galen Rowell as "the most influential environmental photograph ever taken."

Next is the Blue Marble:

Credit: Apollo 17 Crew/NASA

Blue Marble is possibly one of the most widely distributed photographs in the world, having been rescued from the NASA archives in the early 1980s by famine-relief and environmental groups.

And here's one more view of Earth, showing Antarctica and the tip of South America:

Credit: NEAR Spacecraft Team/JHUAPL/NASA

This image, taken in representative color, comes from the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous spacecraft. I like the swirling clouds, but that broad, white sheet of Antarctic ice doesn't make me want to visit there anytime soon.

And finally, one last thing: a nod to the star at the center of our solar system. The sun has no part of the night sky, in that its presence in the sky defines day. Even so, it participates in lunar eclipses and provides the solar winds for the auroras and generally keeps the solar system together with its gravitational pull. So here's a closing thought about our local star from Galileo:

"The Sun, with all the planets revolving around it, and depending on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the Universe to do."

Lullaby for Grown-Ups - Galya

We're coming up on the spring equinox in the northern hemisphere, when day and night are the same length. The first day of spring will be Thursday, and the lullaby this week features beautiful images of flowers, the promise of things to come. The song is If Only, by French artist Galya Clavier.

The Night Sky's Wanderers - Neptune

Credit: Voyager 2/NASA

Beautiful blue Neptune is, it seems, a shy planet, being very far out in the solar system. Discovered in 1846, its existence was deduced from mathematical prediction, not from being directly observed. Irregularities in the orbit of Uranus led astronomers to think that another planet must be gravitationally affecting Uranus. Their prediction turned out to be correct.

Credit: Voyager 2/NASA

The methane in Neptune's atmosphere absorbs red light, giving the planet its lovely blue hue. In 1989, Voyager 2, the only space craft to visit this distant world, recorded the Great Dark Spot in Neptune's atmosphere (upper left in the image above). But unlike Jupiter's persistent Great Red Spot, the dark spot was gone a few years later, based on Hubble observations, and a new spot had appeared elsewhere.

Credit: Voyager 2/NASA

Neptune in a gas giant planet and has the strongest winds in the solar system; they reach supersonic speeds of 1,300 mph. The image above shows light-colored clouds high in the atmosphere. Most of the atmosphere is hydrogen and helium, but scientists think that methane closer to the interior of the planet may condense out into diamonds, not only on Neptune but Uranus as well: "Once these diamonds form, they fall like raindrops or hailstones toward the center of the planet," says one of the researchers.

Credit: Voyager 2/NASA

Neptune has about a dozen moons, and pictured above are Neptune and Triton as crescents, a view never seen from Earth. The unusual angle of the photo yields a slightly reddish planet. What can't be seen are Neptune's rings, which were only discovered in the 1960s.

Credit: Voyager 2/NASA

Triton is Neptune's largest moon, and this color mosaic image shows its surface in great detail. Triton has the coldest surface temperature of any body in the solar system, minus 391 degrees Fahrenheit. It's so cold that nitrogen exists as frost.

Many of these facts about Neptune and Triton were new to me, but maybe you remember a PBS special from 1989, Neptune All Night. It was a live, seven-hour show featuring data and images from Voyager's fly-by as they were coming back to Earth. It's up on YouTube (that's where the link goes), although the video quality isn't great. Still, I love the idea of staying up all night to watch brand-new images from the very edge of the solar system. Slowly the planets are giving up their secrets, even the shy one.

Lullaby for Grown-Ups - Celtic Harp

This week we have a lovely song, played beautifully on the celtic harp - Carolan's Dream, arranged and performed by Mark Harmer. In his comments on the video, he writes, "Tradition has it that the harp was played last thing at night, before people went to bed." I knew there was a reason I went looking for harp music. Enjoy!

The Night Sky's Wanderers - Uranus

Credit: Voyager 2 Team/NASA

As we move outward in the solar system, we come to Uranus, a planet that was unknown to the ancients, having been discovered in relatively modern times (1781). Another gas giant, its atmosphere is mostly hydrogen and helium, but also includes different kinds of ice - methane, water and ammonia.

Credit: E. Karkoschka et al. (University of Arizona)/NICMOS/HST/NASA

Unlike the other gas giant planets, Uranus doesn't have a lot of features visible in its atmosphere. The image above, from the Hubble space telescope, was taken in infrared light. Cloud bands and formations become prominent, and the Uranian rings can be seen as well.

Credit: NASA/ESA/L. Sromovsky (Univ. of Wis., Madison)/H. Hammel (Space Science Inst.)/K. Rages (SETI)

Another beautiful Hubble image shows Uranus's moon, Ariel, in transit across the planet's surface. This is actually an unusual alignment because the orbits of the Uranian moons are such that the moons rarely cross in front of the planet to cast a shadow.

Credit: The Voyager Project/NASA

Rocky, icy Titania, another of the Uranian satellites, was imaged by Voyager 2, the only space craft to visit the planet. Titania is the largest moon in the system and is named, like many of its neighboring moons, for a character from a Shakespearean play.

Credit: Astrogeology Team (USGS)/The Voyager Project

Voyager's image of the moon Oberon features a curious crater, just right of center - a mysterious face dubbed Hamlet (no kidding).

Speaking of names ... can we even begin to count the number of schoolchildren who have laughed themselves silly over Uranus? It actually was originally named the Georgium Sidus, after King George III of England. But in keeping with the convention of naming the planets after gods, "Uranus" was proposed, that being the name of the Greek god of the sky. So laugh if you must, get in touch with your inner middle school self, and enjoy these pictures of Uranus.

Lullaby for Grown-Ups - Colleen

I've been sitting here trying to come up with words to describe this week's lullaby. The music, The Happy Sea, by French musician Colleen, is bright yet soothing. The visuals, by Carolina Melis, are at times fractal, like observing crystals growing on a microscope slide. But they are also organic and cellular, like switching slides on the microscope to watch microbes swim around. Overall, it's curious, a little trippy, and pretty cool.