(Credit to Masonic Boom for finding this one first before I got to Astronomy Picture Of The Day in my feed reader.)
The album cover for Spiritualized’s Lazer Guided Melodies:
The dark nebula SH2-136:
Separated At Birth, Part VII
Category: Space
Back to the future, forward into the past
Shagadelic baby! I hope they can get the folks who put together Encounter at LAX to handle the interiors for the spaceport terminal.
I have to wonder though. Is 21st century space travel already a post-ironic retro event? Most of these private space efforts have been kick-started by memories of old “Man Into Space” documentaries and irritation at NASA’s endless stream of broken promises, so I shouldn’t be surprised that “the future” as it’s being constructed now resembles the future as we remembered it being. Nostalgia, but nostalgia for events that haven’t yet occurred. It’s an odd sense of temporal displacement, like going from the classic ’60s Mustang to the current retro-Mustang without all the stuff in between. All those Derek Meddings and Roger Dean designs were supposed to be art, not actual blueprints.
i like it. I’ll bet the folks on the ISS are jealous.
Somewhere over your head the future is happening
Photo of shuttle Atlantis and ISS passing in front of the sun today from astronomer Thierry Legault. Hi-res version here.
Meanwhile, Atlantis’ landing has been delayed because of a “mystery object” floating nearby.
[via Wohba]
Hail Eris!
As a full-fledged Discordian Pope (consecrated by RAW himself) I am most pleased to learn that 2003 UB313, a.k.a. Xena, a.k.a. the 10th Planet, is now officially known as Eris (the Greek goddess of discord). Eris’ tiny moon got the name Dysnomia (Dysnomia is Eris’ daughter, the goddess of lawlessness)
Ewige Blumenkraft!
Orion
Everyone in Blogistan is talking about the next-gen NASA spacecraft Orion and the freshly inked contract with Lockheed Martin. Yeah, the Raumpatrouille Orion is way marvy, and the 50s-era “Project Orion” nuke ship is a fun Bad Idea, but I’m shocked that none of the pop-sci-cult watchers out there (and yes Boing Boing, I’m looking at you) namechecked the most notable Orion of all.
These mock-up pictures of what the 2001 Orion operation would have looked like are pretty cool too.
A Pluto Observation
If people were as emotionally invested in the space program as they are with Pluto’s planetary status, we would have had a moonbase by now.
Just saying.
No disrespect to the Mi-Go. Though the whole place is likely to be incinerated anyway.
Separated At Birth, Part VI
Colliding black holes as 
NASA Ghosts
Ran across a photo that gave me a brief pause…
Kinda miss the days when a moon rocket would block traffic. Here’s the same intersection today, it’s at Seal Beach Blvd. at Leisure World in Seal Beach.
Hayabusa
There’s been so many eye-croggling terrific pictures of the solar system lately, but this one of Hayabusa’s shadow on asteroid Itokawa is my fave of the moment. I hope the landing comes off OK.
Rocket Scientists
Five things overheard while watching last week’s DARPA’s Minotaur launch from Vandenberg from Long Beach (all quotes verbatim from actual Long Beach residents):
1. “Look at that contrail, it was totally out of control!”
2. “It looks like a spaceship blew up!”
3. “Yeah, it was something launched from the desert”
4. “Did something crash?”
5. “As soon as it dumped that jet, it hit the rocket and just took off out of there!”
The launch contrail as seen from Mt. Wilson’s Towercam.
