The Galilean Satellites: Europa

This is the first in a four-part series of films dedicated to legendary filmmaker and friend, Stan Brakhage. It is also dedicated to a group of filmmakers with whom I shared orbit around the massive scope of Brakhage's work.

This has been the "audience favorite" of my works so far- at least, it has traveled around the world to all sorts of festivals and gotten great feedback (though the New York Times called it both one of the "most ambitious" films in its program as well as "relentlessly abstract." I'm not quite sure how to take the latter, but every artist knows that "ambitious" feels like a blow-off. I digress...)

As such, I am a bit reluctant to post it online, where it will be seen at 1/100th of its intended size, with resampled sound and dropped frames. Still, I'm reaching out into the volgosphere! It will be traveling around the country soon, so perhaps it might inspire a few souls to go see it when it comes to town (more details as they become available).

It is a 16mm sound film that imagines the icy hatched-marked world of Jupiter's moon, Europa. The soundtrack consists of recordings from several probes that visited the moon (specifically, the "sounds" are coming from the atmosphere of Jupiter), as well as whale songs- an imagining of the possible life beneath the icy surface. The imagery combines hand-painted liquid crystals and Super-8mm footage from a local aquarium (hooray for (now extinct) Kodachrome).

Living with a Star

This could be a shocking expose about life with a celebrity. It's not.

It's actually the name of a group that studies the interactions between the sun and life on Earth, or space weather. Furthermore, it's a cool way for me to show you something... cool. Well, cool relative to the rest of its surroundings, anyway. It's actually pretty hot! The below movie clip is footage of a sunspot captured by the Japanese-launched Hinode (Sunrise) international spacecraft.

Sunspots are areas of relatively cool temperature on the surface of the sun. This is caused by intense magnetic activity, which inhibits convection (that up and down swirliness that you see in soup and coffee- among other things, I'm just kind of hungry right now). The exact details of how and why they happen is still an area of intense research in Physics.

Some have said that the footage looks like trilobites. Others have said it looks like cells. According to the article (if you click on the title to this blog, it will take you there- all of the titles of my blog entries are links, incidentally): "This movie is a magnetogram— a dynamic map tracing the sunspot's intense magnetism," Physicist Lika Guhathakurta explains. "Black represents negative (S) polarity, and white represents positive (N)."

I just think it's pretty cool! Enjoy!

The Galilean Satellites- Callisto!

Finally! I feel so neglectful of poor little Callisto. I got my firewire cable in the mail on Monday and re-rendered Callisto last night. Callisto is the final film in The Galilean Satellites series. She is silent. This film was complete magic toward the end. I had not quite expected the results that I got, but I was awed by them.

Callisto is also one of the most heavily cratered bodies in the solar system. Jupiter's gravity attracts comets, meteoroids, and other objects and Callisto, being far away and tectonically inactive, bears thousands of years worth of battle scars. She also has the lowest density of the Galilean Satellites and it is thought that there might be an ocean beneath her rocky crust.

The imagery consists of liquid crystal paints and rubbing alcohol (like I said, magic). Enjoy:

The Galilean Satellites- Ganymede

If Europa could be considered the "audience favorite" of my films, Ganymede would have to be her cute little brother. This is the third film in The Galilean Satellites series. It is quite a bit shorter than the previous two, but was easily the hardest of the series to make (easily the hardest- bad English, I know, but funny enough for me to leave it there).

The imagery is both digital and film in origin. The opening sequence of photographs consists of digital images taken by the Galileo probe that visited Jupiter recently. The film imagery is clear 16mm film leader that has been scratched, pitted, twisted and bent to refract the polarized light.

The soundtrack consists of radio signals received from the moon's ionosphere. Unlike the previous two films, however, I have not manipulated this sound in any way. In fact, you can hear Ganymede's voice on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's page.

This film tries to capture the essence of Ganymede, who, like his sisters, is pulled and pushed by the tidal forces of Jupiter and the other moons (sibling rivalry...even the planets and Greek deities suffer from it).

The Galilean Satellites- Io

This is the second film in The Galilean Satellites series. It is an artistic study of the wrenching and twisting of Jupiter's volcanic moon, Io. This film is quite a bit longer than the others. It is also what I feel to be the "scariest" film I've ever made. The soundtrack consists of stretched and manipulated radio emissions from Io's ionosphere, while the image consists of various objects that I'm twisting and pulling in polarized light.

Io is constantly pulled and pushed upon by her sister moons and the immense gravity of Jupiter. This film probes into the beauty of turmoil. Io is the most volcanically active body in the solar system, and is actually the hottest body in the solar system, outside of the sun (which reminds me of that Groucho Marx quote: "Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read").

Again, imagine this quite a bit bigger than it actually is. Much of my work is meant to be seen on a very large scale. I have wanted to project this particular film around an entire room as an installation.

It was originally shot on 16mm film and is a sound piece:

Ether Twist

Back on track! Now, for the next film in my one-woman show: "Ether Twist." This film has sound! It's strange and quiet, but it's there...

Sounds from very low frequency (VLF) radio emissions make up the soundtrack to this film. These sounds include aurorae, solar flares, lightning and other electromagnetic phenomena that affect the Earth's ionosphere. The imagery is composed of various pieces of transparent plastics (try to guess what some of them are- you might be surprised) whose colors are revealed through polarized light. Neither the sound nor the image would be detectable if it weren't for careful manipulation of electromagnetic waves.

Many thanks to Stephen P. McGreevy for recording the incredible VLF sounds and allowing me to use them. This is a rather large file- the film is about 10 minutes long.

Footnotes: Ether (or Aether) was once considered to be quintessence, or the "fifth element." It was thought the be the medium through which light waves (indeed, all energy) traveled. It has since been dropped from the world of scientific thought and is considered to be, well, more...ethereal (not sure if that can qualify as a pun, but it was intended). It is considered to be the unifying energy for all living spirits in Wicca and some other religions.

The film title owes its existence to lyrics in the Tori Amos song, "Suede:"

i'm sure that you've been briefed my absorption lines they are frayed and i fear my fear is greater than my faith but i walk the missionary way you always felt like suede there are days i am your twin peekaboo hiding underneath your skin jets are revving yes revving from an ether twist call me 'evil' call me 'tide is on your side' anything you want

I connected with these lyrics instantly, but really keyed in on the phrase "ether twist." The liquid crystal materials I use do a sort of "ether twist." By twisting (refracting) the direction of the light waves at different wavelengths (colors), the bland, transparent plastics become vibrant, colored light sources.

Light Years Before Dreaming

Each night when I lay down to sleep, I disturb the air with my bedding. I inadvertently send lint and dust particles flying through the air. I know this because I see them against the dark background of my wall in the intense beam of light that descends from my halogen ceiling lamp. These particles float and mingle in the air currents. Sometimes I watch them. They shine like stars. They are multiple colors. Some of them blink like pulsars; others only exist as a momentary flash- a micronova. Perhaps our universe exists as the result of a cosmic settling down of sorts. Perhaps we are the last thought before dreaming. If we were to view ourselves from afar, we might look exactly like this micro-universe I am observing.

My curiosity gets the best of me. I reach out to try to touch one of these shimmering particles. Though I reach slowly, the particles react violently. They swirl around in this new air current. My gentle reach contains all the violence of a black hole. Of course, I cannot touch the particle I originally targeted. It has changed its course. I have lost it in this dust galaxy.

Something else happens. Suddenly, I can no longer see my stars. The reflection of the light’s beam off my hand is too intense. This bright light on such a large surface prevents me from seeing the complex galaxy that I just disturbed.

I realize that as humans, we do this all the time. We reach out with our curiosity and our egos as we constantly reflect upon ourselves. How beautiful would the universe appear if we could see it without blinding ourselves with our own existence?

Fires of Creation?

The Spitzer Space telescope recently took this amazing picture:

This object is being called "The Double Helix Nebula" due to its DNA strand shape. The shape is thought to be caused by the magnetic field near our galaxy's center.

This nebula is about 300 light years from the black hole at the center of the Milky Way (to put that into perspective, we are over 25,000 light years away from it). It joins the "Strangely Shaped Nebulae Club," consisting of such members as the red rectangle and, of course, the smiley binary system highlighted below!

This is a false-color image. Spitzer is an infrared telescope. Since we can't see infrared, the images are assigned colors so that we can see them.

Photo credit: NASA/JPL, Caltech/UCLA

An Optimist's Confirmation

I just received my beautiful e-postcard from the Spitzer Space Telescope:

What you are looking at is Stephan's Quintet. Four of the five galaxies in this image are colliding. The green arc in the center of the image is actually one of the largest shock waves ever seen- it's a shock wave bigger than our own galaxy! It is being produced by one galaxy falling toward another at over a million miles per hour.

Now what you might not see is actual scientific proof of a long-held belief! Now don't be hard on yourself if you don't initially see it, I am an astronomer and have been trained in image analysis. I know the proper equations to apply to this image to glean the truly necessary information. Using complex number wave functions and a little bit of scientific ingenuity I have come up with this:

God truly does have a sense of humor.

Enceladus Is the New Hoth

Image: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

So the ice volcanoes continue to be intriguing! It seems that the general consensus is that Enceladus is, in fact, the source of Saturn's gossamer "E" ring. From the Cassini website:

"Saturn's remarkable E-ring is the largest planetary ring in our solar system, spanning all the way from Mimas' orbit to Titan's orbit, about 1 million kilometers (621,370 miles). It is by far the most extended ring around Saturn.

"Until recently scientists assumed that the dust at Enceladus was produced by a process similar to that observed at the Galilean moons of Jupiter: micrometeoroids striking the moon's surface blasting dust particles loose. However, the Cassini data show that the E ring is being replenished not only by dust particles from micrometeoroid hits on the surface of Enceladus but also from grains expelled from possible vents located in the south polar region. The possibility of vents is revealed by a higher surface temperature detected by Cassini's composite and infrared spectrometer, which detected temperature differences at the south pole."

Image: NASA/JPL

For years, we have heard about the moons of Jupiter, particularly the Galilean Satellites: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. Io is a volcanic moon, Europa is an ice moon that may hold a salty sea beneath its surface (and some speculate that it is one of the most likely places in the solar system where we might find life). With Cassini's arrival at Saturn on July 1, 2004, we have heard plenty about its incredible satellites- Rhea, Dione, HyperionMimas, Iapetus... The Huygens probe has given us pictures of Titan that have stoked the imaginative fires. We have seen a landscape that looks like shorelines, cliffs, and rivers. People have speculated that it might be an active place full of volcanism, and (of course) life. Titan has brought up more questions than answers- are those features really shorelines? Is there really a methane sea that is replenished by "rain?"

Now Enceladus has given us an amazing picture: scientists expected to find ammonia in the ice volcanoes. Ammonia would help keep the water in a liquid or gas state at lower temperatures. So far, they have not found any! Additionally, this moon has the highest albedo (99%- the same value as fresh ice) of any body in the solar system. This means that of all the radiation to hit the surface, 99% of it is reflected. Enceladus, it turns out, is a bright, giant snowball, where it may even snow (hence the Hoth reference. For the Star Wars illiterate, Hoth is the ice planet that hosted the rebel Echo Base (and the AT-AT walker battle scene) in "The Empire Strikes Back")! And (the speculations fly), if an energy source beneath the surface is warm enough to melt the ice, perhaps it is warm enough to support life..? What a much more complex picture we have of our solar system! I remember my sixth grade science teacher telling us that scientists know for a fact that there is no life in the solar system outside of this planet. Now we don't seem to be so sure.

By the way, there is a really interesting video on how Saturn's moons interact with its rings here.

Orion Nebula

This is a picture I took of the Orion Nebula last Spring. It was taken with a digital camera through a 24" telescope. It's a little rough, but it's my first composite image!

The colors correspond to various narrow-band wavelength exposures.

The Red Rectangle

One of the most intriguing objects that we have photographed with the Hubble telescope is the "Red Rectangle." This object is a very unusually-shaped nebula.

The star in the center is one (or maybe two, we now think) very similar to our own Sun. It has reached the end period of its life and is now ejecting material from its outer layers. Why it looks like this (the color and structure) is still something of a mystery. Don't you just love a mystery?

Of course I say "one of the most intriguing objects" because Hubble has photographed so many amazing things! I really hope we can keep it going.

Photo credit: NASA; ESA; Hans Van Winckel (Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium); and Martin Cohen (University of California, Berkeley)

(by the way, the above image was gleaned from http://hubblesite.org/ they have a lot of other great images to check out)

What Am I?

Fifty points to the insomniac out there who recognizes and solves this equation:  

[latex]V_{esc} = \sqrt{\frac{2GM}{R}}[/latex]

$$y=3x+2$$

It's an easy one ;)

(note: for the Earth, M = 5.97219 × 1024 and R = 6,371km You have to figure out the rest!)