Firefox in Space

If you often watch The Big Bang Theory(the tv sitcom), you will notice this is poster hanging on the wall of Raj's office.

It's the V838 Monocerotis or  V838 Mon which is a red variable star(or should i say now the remnant after the outburst) in the constellation Monoceros some 20,000 light years away. The remnant is still expanding and evolving rapidly as you can see the progress in this Hubble poster.

If you look closely you might also notice a resemblance, that some people see, to the logo of Mozilla Firefox like here below. Perhaps its just imagination or projection, but I have to admit the resemblance here is uncanny that even and if it was photoshoped to match, it only requires very little change. In fact, if the photo publish by HST in February 2004 is rotated, it will be easier to see.

Checking on the history of the Firefox logo, there was no mention that it was ever inspired by the V838 Mon. In fact, it the introduction of the Firefox logo that we know today is cutting it close as it was also introduced February 2004 adding a queer coincidence.

This projection gives us clue how early sky gazers looked up at the night sky and imagined to form pictures they have in their minds by connecting the (star as) dots which we now call constellations.

I'm not exactly a Firefox fan as I use Google Chrome more. But even the google chrome logo has resemblance to the December 2002 photo of this very same star. But no, I think I know where chrome logo came from. Let me give you a hint.

Surreal Skies of Mount Pinatubo

Not long ago, the idea of a moon as a habitable place for life was not very popular. Nowadays, the possibility of life in exomoons are now more accepted. In fact, in our own solar system, it is now thought that life is more possible to exist in moons of gas giant planets like Saturn and Jupiter rather than in Mar,Venus, or elsewhere.

Imagine if we find a real exomoon like Pandora int the movie Avatar. What would it look like? Would it be really earth-like? Maybe it would just be like in the movie. I can imagine the sky would be quite a site. A big planet perhaps instead of a small moon. There are already pictures out there depicting what the scene might look like. But you might be surprise how anyone can create own photos like those.

Apart from desktop astronomy, I also enjoy a bit of desktop photo manipulation.

And I already tried to create my own with a scene of a surreal sky viewed from exomoon orbiting a ringed exoplanet.

So, I like to share how to DIY.

1. Find a postcard picture of a landscape of your choice. Mine is a landscape photo of the crater of Mt. Pinatubo after the eruption of '91.

2. Find a picture of a planet of your choice. Mine is a fictional planet with rings similar to our Saturn.

3. Use Photoshop to crop the planet and combine it with your landscape. Position it in a way that it would conform to the landscape's direction of light. I put mine in the horizon. Then, de-saturate the color and tint it according to the color of the sky. Blend the two photos by reducing the opacity of the planet to about 50%.

Like so, you now have your own surreal sky exomoon-exoplanet photo.

How Big are Objects Out There

A couple of years ago, I showed this exact video to my nephew and he liked watching it over and over because of the background music. I was showing him how small earth is compared to the rest out there. I remember him asking "Play it again, tito, please".  At his young age of five back then, and I can already see the wonder in his face to see how big other objects are.

The wonder is the same to me until now. I mean, how insignificant are we? Like if the whole universe is a painting on a big canvas, even if the whole earth would disappear, it wouldn't change the painting a tiny bit. This fact never fails to humble me.