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Parliament calls for creative industries to share views on impact of Brexit

Parliament has launched an inquiry calling for members of the public to submit their thoughts on the impact of Brexit on the creative industries.

The Culture, Media and Sport Committee which oversees the actions of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport has published a form on the parliament.uk website asking for written submissions.

The form asks people to submit their opinions on the “impact of Brexit on the creative industries, tourism and the digital single market”.

The digital single market enables free movement of people, services and money across the European Union (EU), and means people and businesses within the EU can use the internet under fair competition and have data protection.

More specifically, the committee is inviting people to submit their views on issues including:

employment in the creative industries and tourism
the effect on number of visitors to the UK
the effect of the fall in value of the pound on business and tourism
copyright, designs, patent and trademark laws
being outside of the EU's single market
the impact of the loss of EU funding, including specialist funds like the Creative Europe Fund and general ones like the Regional Development Fund.

Designers have previously spoken out in opposition of leaving the EU, their main concerns being less access to international talent and to exports, limited collaboration with other designers abroad and potential damage to intellectual property and design registration laws.

But other designers are in support of the vote to leave James Dyson recently told The Telegraph that leaving Europe would give British businesses “huge strength in independence”, and allow them to “make their own decisions”, while “being subservient to Europe…is entirely not in this country's interest”.

Anyone can submit a form, as an individual or as part of an organisation. The website reads that most written submissions will be published on the parliament.uk website, and if anyone wishes for their entry to be confidential or not to be published, they need to provide reasons why.

MP Damian Collins, acting chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, says: “The process of leaving the European Union is one of the greatest challenges that the UK faces today. The creative industries and tourism are two of the most important sectors in our economy, and we have to make sure that Brexit can become a success for them.

“For this inquiry, we want to examine all of the challenges and opportunities that Brexit could bring… we want to hear from people and organisations in the creative and tourism sectors on any concerns or ideas they may have relating to Brexit.”

The deadline for written submissions is 28 October 2016. Access the form here.

The post Parliament calls for creative industries to share views on impact of Brexit appeared first on Design Week.

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Maxx Burman: Stepping Away From Hollywood for Personal Creative Satisfaction

If Maxx Burman does his job right, you won't even notice his work because it not only blends into the background it is the background. The Los Angeles-based matte painter and VFX supervisor has digitally painted frozen tundras, alien environments, and other wild virtual landscapes for some of the world's most prominent films. His matte paintings have served as the backdrops for Hollywood blockbusters (Godzilla and Iron Man 3), popular shows (Game Of Thrones and The Walking Dead), and video games (Call of Duty and League of Legends).

However, two years ago Burman realized he was consciously disowning the directorial changes made to his work. While working on blockbusters, he had to let his work go and allow someone else to tinker, shape, or even overhaul what he designed. So for the time being, he has made the choice to step away from focusing on the big titles and to find projects with clients who let him inject his personal style into the work.

After leaving his art director role at Elastic Pictures in June, Burman is committing more hours to personal projects, including his game One More Night and his first solo art show, Disconnect.

We talked with Burman about how he established himself as a go-to matte painter for Hollywood, why he has shelved those gigs at the moment, and how that led him to appreciate his art in a whole new way.

How did your background, both your skills and education, lead you to matte painting?

I fell in love with Photoshop and painting at a young age, so I put a lot of hours into trying new things and teaching myself new tools. I didn't even realize that there was a career around this at first. When I was 18, after high school, I cold-called every visual effects studio I could find online and just said, “I need to be in the studio, on that side of things. I don't care if I have to make the coffee!” That's how I got my first job as an intern at Zoic.

At Zoic, you worked for renowned matte painter Syd Dutton. What did you learn from him?

There is so much that I still use today. He would give me art history classes, and taught me how artists like French painter Jean-Léon Gérôme would use composition to tell a story in a painting, or how the Hudson River School painters used color and light to move your eye around a canvas. One of the big non-art lessons he taught me was about taking pride in my craft and how to present myself. A lot of people in Vfx studios wear shorts and sandals, but when I started working with Syd, that ended. With him, I had to wear a dress shirt, dress shoes, and nice jeans or slacks. He would tell me, “It doesn't matter what everyone else is doing, it's your responsibility to maintain the respect of matte painting, and that means presenting yourself in a professional way.” That never left me.

"maxx-article-text-2"

Tell us about the craziest major entertainment production experience you had.

One of my early jobs as a concept artist was designing a Coca-Cola commercial tying in to the first Avatar movie. There was so much mystery and hype around the 10-year production of Avatar, and everything was top secret. I was given a couple hours in a room with a book that had all of the concept art for the film. I had to memorize the look of different environments before painting 10 concepts for this commercial.

For four straight days I was at the studio, and I finished the 10 paintings. On the night before the pitch, slightly delirious and sleep deprived, my producer and I went to Kinko's to print out all of the art work. We left the files with a Kinko's employee and grabbed a couple coffees while we waited for the printing to finish. We returned to the studio at 7 a.m., and dropped off the printed boards of paintings that we had gift wrapped with a huge bow. Then we both went home for the day and passed out.

I woke up that night to tons of voicemails and missed calls. They were from the receptionist at the studio, saying that FBI agents were there looking for me. The producer I was working with, and I rushed back into the studio, to find that Kinko's had flagged us for leaking “top secret” material and reported it to the FBI who went to investigate and tracked it back to us.

By the time we made it back to the studio, everything had been handled. It was shown that the “top secret” work was work from the film. There weren't any consequences, but it was one hell of a scare.

When working on these major entertainment productions, you are asked to produce someone else's vision while also applying your own style to the experience. How do you balance these two responsibilities?

I've actually spent my whole career trying not to have a style and to adapt to whatever a client wants, while trying to do something different every time. I've learned over the years how to communicate visually and understand what a director is looking for so I can nail a look quickly and with precision. Now that I've done thousands of paintings, I've started to pay attention more and more to my tendencies and taste, and I realize what my personal style actually is, even if it's hidden underneath surface styles of different projects. Lately, I've been more interested in working with people who trust me to give them something good and let me inject a bit more of myself in my work.

"maxx-article-text-1"

Do you find it is harder or easier to find work without a set style?

I've found that being able to adapt to any style broadens your range of possible clients. That's one of the reasons why I never got too attached to a single style, and why I've always tried to hit every end of the spectrum, whether it's animation, abstract, or photo-real. Right now, however, I'm focused on developing my signature style. It's not all I do, but I see the benefit of it. Having your own style broadcasts to the world what you enjoy doing. That might narrow down the possible clients, but that's not a bad thing. You're honing in on the clients and projects that you enjoy most, and there's a lot of value in that.

Why do you begin creating these virtual worlds by hand?

It's really easy to lose yourself in the tools technology gives us. I start by sketching because it allows me to forget about all of the clutter and focus on the important foundation that any image needs to be built on: composition, shape, and light. I know I have the tools to make something look beautiful, detailed and real, but that's all for nothing if it's not built on solid design choices.

In addition to your current work for Elastic Pictures, you have created independent shorts like ***Portal No Escape*. Do you approach these indie projects differently?**

Not at all. I approach every project the same way, whether it's a commercial, a short film, or a big blockbuster. It's all in or nothing for me! I try to get all the business stuff out the away at the beginning and then we can focus on creating the best visuals possible. When a project doesn't have a budget, I have to call in favors and I have to make sure that those people are ready to go down that rabbit hole with me. We did one a couple of years ago called Polis with director Steven Ilous, which was pretty much a freebie project where I called in every favor I had. We ended up having a team of 50 people in five countries working for four months on it as a passion project. You do a project for different reasons: sometimes you do it for the money and sometimes you do it for the excitement. This one I did to work with all my favorite people, in all my favorite studios gathered around one big project.

How does your work for these major entertainment properties compare to your work for lesser known clients, and how important is it for you to have major clients like movie studios on your resume?

I always thought it would be different working on large projects, but at the end of the day you are still in front of your computer doing your thing and it doesn't really change. I spent a lot of time working to get the big projects, and then the only thing that got me would be a little ego trip for a while. I hope that my work speaks for itself without the project title on it. That's always my goal. I haven't worked on a film in around two years. I spent so long going after blockbusters, and once I got them I realized that I was doing that for my own ego, and I wasn't really satisfied. I worked on Iron Man 3 a couple of years ago, and leading up to it you think, This is going to be huge. And it was. It was big and awesome, but you lived that for six months and then it comes out and you have opening weekend and you celebrate with your friends and then it's forgotten. Because of that I took a step away from chasing the big titles and focused on the projects that would let me live the life I wanted to live and create the paintings I wanted to create no matter what they were for. That has bought me a lot more happiness and satisfaction.

How has your relationship to your art changed as a result?

The hardest things I've had to learn in my career so far is changing the relationship I have to a painting. There's a point when my work is no longer my work, I have to let go and realize it belongs to someone else. I might get notes I don't agree with, or the painting might be composited into a shot differently than I intended. It almost never happens that I see a final image on the screen that is exactly what I painted. There's always a point with client work that I have to disown the artwork, and allow it to become whatever it's going to become. Through the years, I've learned how to fall out of love with my work.

What would you say to someone who feels they need blockbuster projects to define their career as a success?

Everyone is on their own path, and we all have different measures of success. For me, blockbusters are fun. I enjoy working on them, but they don't define my career. That's just me and my journey. If someone wants to define their career by their credits, and it makes them feel successful, thats awesome.

culture

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astronomy

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China's Space Officials Confirm: 'Heavenly Palace' Space Station is Hurtling Towards Earth -- "It's Out of Control"

Tiangong 1, China's first space laboratory, will come to a fiery end. Most decommissioned satellites either burns up over aa ocean or is ejected to a far-off orbital graveyard, but the 8-ton Tiangong 1's end is shaping up to be something very different. Chinese officials reported during a Sept. 14 news conference in Jiuquan that they had lost control of the station.

“You really can't steer these things,” Harvard University astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell told the Guardian. “Even a couple of days before it re-enters we probably won't know better than six or seven hours, plus or minus, when it's going to come down. Not knowing when it's going to come down translates as not knowing where it's going to come down.”

“Based on our calculation and analysis, most parts of the space lab will burn up during falling,” Wu Ping, a director at China's space engineering office, said during the conference. A day later China launched Tiangong 2, the lab's successor, aboard a Long March 7 rocket. Wu added that China is monitoring the space station for collisions with other orbiting satellites. According to Wu most of the debris will not hit Earth, but there is some chance of it happening.

larger spacecraft destined for re-entry, usually follow a planned descent. The wreckage that survives re-entry splashes down far from human habitation. About 2,500 miles to the east of New Zealand, for instance, is a patch of the Pacific Ocean informally known as the spacecraft cemetery. Remains of the Mir station and more than 100 other Russian, European and Japanese satellites sit in this area. Although much of Tiangong 1 will disintegrate, McDowell predicted that 200-pound pieces — the tougher remnants of, say, rocket engines — could withstand the trauma of re-entry.

Tiangong 1 is currently orbiting the planet more than 200 miles above Earth's surface. China launched Tiangong 1, which translates to “Heavenly Palace,” in 2011, serving as China's base of space experiments for roughly 4½ years, two years longer than originally anticipated. The last crewed mission was in 2013, although the station continued to autonomously operate until it was decommissioned in March 2016.

This June, amateur satellite tracker Thomas Dorman of El Paso warned Space.com that, based on his observations, the eight-ton space lab was out of control. “If I am right,” Dorman said at the time, “China will wait until the last minute to let the world know it has a problem with their space station.”

The Daily Galaxy via The Guardian, Wired, and Washington Post

NASA Recovers "Flying Saucer" in Pacific

Weekend 'Galaxy' Insight --"We May be One of the Early Advanced Species in the Universe"

NASA 'Flying Saucer' Launch Set for Today --"A Soft Mars Landing for Manned Exploration"

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NASA Astronomers Observe a Supermassive Black Hole Destroying a Star

"The black hole has destroyed everything between itself and this dust shell," said Sjoert van Velzen, at Johns Hopkins University. "It's as though the black hole has cleaned its room by throwing flames." Supermassive black holes, with their immense gravitational pull, are notoriously good at clearing out their immediate surroundings by eating nearby objects. When a star passes within a certain distance of a black hole, the stellar material gets stretched and compressed -- or "spaghettified" -- as the black hole swallows it.

A black hole destroying a star, an event astronomers call "stellar tidal disruption," releases an enormous amount of energy, brightening the surroundings in an event called a flare. In recent years, a few dozen such flares have been discovered, but they are not well understood.

Astronomers now have new insights into tidal disruption flares, thanks to data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). Two new studies characterize tidal disruption flares by studying how surrounding dust absorbs and re-emits their light, like echoes. This approach allowed scientists to measure the energy of flares from stellar tidal disruption events more precisely than ever before.

"This is the first time we have clearly seen the infrared light echoes from multiple tidal disruption events," said van Velzen, postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, and lead author of a study finding three such events, to be published in the Astrophysical Journal. A fourth potential light echo based on WISE data has been reported by an independent study led by Ning Jiang, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Science and Technology of China.

Flares from black holes eating stars contain high-energy radiation, including ultraviolet and X-ray light. Such flares destroy any dust that hangs out around a black hole. But at a certain distance from a black hole, dust can survive because the flare's radiation that reaches it is not as intense.

After the surviving dust is heated by a flare, it gives off infrared radiation. WISE measures this infrared emission from the dust near a black hole, which gives clues about tidal disruption flares and the nature of the dust itself. Infrared wavelengths of light are longer than visible light and cannot be seen with the naked eye. The WISE spacecraft, which maps the entire sky every six months, allowed the variation in infrared emission from the dust to be measured.

Astronomers used a technique called "photo-reverberation" or "light echoes" to characterize the dust. This method relies on measuring the delay between the original optical light flare and the subsequent infrared light variation, when the flare reaches the dust surrounding the black hole. This time delay is then used to determine the distance between the black hole and the dust.

Van Velzen's study looked at five possible tidal disruption events, and saw the light echo effect in three of them. Jiang's group saw it in an additional event called ASASSN-14li.

Measuring the infrared glow of dust heated by these flares allows astronomers to make estimates of the location of dust that encircles the black hole at the center of a galaxy.

"Our study confirms that the dust is there, and that we can use it to determine how much energy was generated in the destruction of the star," said Varoujan Gorjian, an astronomer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, and co-author of the paper led by van Velzen.

Researchers found that the infrared emission from dust heated by a flare causes an infrared signal that can be detected for up to a year after the flare is at its most luminous. The results are consistent with the black hole having a patchy, spherical web of dust located a few trillion miles (half a light-year) from the black hole itself.

JPL manages and operates WISE for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The spacecraft was put into hibernation mode in 2011, after it scanned the entire sky twice, thereby completing its main objectives. In September 2013, WISE was reactivated, renamed NEOWISE and assigned a new mission to assist NASA's efforts to identify potentially hazardous near-Earth objects.

The Daily Galaxy via http://www.nasa.gov/wise

The Most Luminous Galaxy in the Universe --"May Harbor a Behemoth Black Hole"

"The Observed Alien Planets in the Milky Way" --A NASA Image of the Kepler Mission Discoveries

Two-Faces of Pluto --"Dark Mysteries of the Unexplored Planet"

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Dwarf Galaxies Orbiting the Milky Way --"The Enigma At the Heart of the Dark Matter Mystery"

Dwarf galaxies are enigmas wrapped in riddles. Although they are the smallest galaxies, they represent some of the biggest mysteries about our universe. While many dwarf galaxies surround our own Milky Way, there seem to be far too few of them compared with standard cosmological models, which raises a lot of questions about the nature of dark matter and its role in galaxy formation.

New theoretical modeling work from Andrew Wetzel, who holds a joint fellowship between Carnegie and Caltech, offers the most accurate predictions to date about the dwarf galaxies in the Milky Way's neighborhood. Wetzel achieved this by running the highest-resolution and most-detailed simulation ever of a galaxy like our Milky Way. His findings, published by The Astrophysical Journal Letters, help to resolve longstanding debates about how these dwarf galaxies formed.

One of the biggest mysteries of dwarf galaxies has to do with dark matter, which is why scientists are so fascinated by them. "Dwarf galaxies are at the nexus of dark matter science," Wetzel said.

Dark matter makes up a quarter of our universe. It exerts a gravitational pull, but doesn't seem to interact with regular matter--like atoms, stars, and us--in any other way. We know it exists because of the gravitational effect it has on stars and gas and dust. This effect is why it is key to understanding galaxy formation. Without dark matter, galaxies could not have formed in our universe as they did. There just isn't enough gravity to hold them together without it.

The role of dark matter in the formation of dwarf galaxies has remained a mystery. The standard cosmological model has told us that, because of dark matter, there should be many more dwarf galaxies out there, surrounding our own Milky Way, than we have found. Astronomers have developed a number of theories for why we haven't found more, but none of them could account for both the paucity of dwarf galaxies and their properties, including their mass, size, and density.

As observation techniques have improved, more dwarf galaxies have been spotted orbiting the Milky Way. But still not enough to align with predictions based on standard cosmological models.

So scientists have been honing their simulation techniques in order to bring theoretical modeling predictions and observations into better agreement. In particular, Wetzel and his collaborators worked on carefully modeling the complex physics of stellar evolution, including how supernovae--the fantastic explosions that punctuate the death of massive stars--affect their host galaxy.

With these advances, Wetzel ran the most-detailed simulation of a galaxy like our Milky Way. Excitingly, his model resulted in a population of dwarf galaxies that is similar to what astronomers observe around us.

As Wetzel explained: "By improving how we modeled the physics of stars, this new simulation offered a clear theoretical demonstration that we can, indeed, understand the dwarf galaxies we've observed around the Milky Way. Our results thus reconcile our understanding of dark matter's role in the universe with observations of dwarf galaxies in the Milky Way's neighborhood."

Despite having run the highest-resolution simulation to date, Wetzel continues to push forward, and he is in the process of running an even higher-resolution, more-sophisticated simulation that will allow him to model the very faintest dwarf galaxies around the Milky Way.

"This mass range gets interesting, because these 'ultra-faint' dwarf galaxies are so faint that we do not yet have a complete observational census of how many exist around the Milky Way. With this next simulation, we can start to predict how many there should be for observers to find," he added.

Astronomers at the University of Cambridge spotted a new dwarf galaxy shown at the top of the page that has never been seen before, just outside the Milky Way. The galaxy is the fourth largest known to be orbiting our galaxy.

The Daily Galaxy via Carnegie Institute for Science

Image credit: NASA

Ripple at Edge of the Milky Way --"Reveals Veil of Dark Matter Cloaking a Dwarf Galaxy"

Dark-Matter 'Superhighways' of the Cosmos --"Connecting Vast Bubbles Devoid of Galaxies"

"Gigantic Compared to Our Solar System" --Two Massive Holes Caused by Dark Matter Observed Just Outside Milky Way"

Phantoms of the Milky Way --"Galactic Quakes Reveal Invisible Starless Galaxies Orbiting Our Galaxy"

Dark-Matter Galaxy Detected in the Far Side of the Milky Way

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ESO's ALMA Observatory Uncovers Secrets of Giant Space Blob

An international team using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), along with the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) and other telescopes, has discovered the true nature of a rare object in the distant Universe called a Lyman-alpha Blob (LAB). Up to now astronomers did not understand what made these huge clouds of gas shine so brightly, but ALMA has now seen two galaxies at the heart of one of these objects and they are undergoing a frenzy of star formation that is lighting up their surroundings. These large galaxies are in turn at the center of a swarm of smaller ones in what appears to be an early phase in the formation of a massive cluster of galaxies. The two ALMA sources are destined to evolve into a single giant elliptical galaxy.

LABs are gigantic clouds of hydrogen gas that can span hundreds of thousands of light-years and are found at very large cosmic distances. The name reflects the characteristic wavelength of ultraviolet light that they emit, known as Lyman-alpha radiation. Since their discovery, the processes that give rise to LABs have been an astronomical puzzle. New observations with ALMA have now cleared up the mystery.

The negatively charged electrons that orbit the positively charged nucleus in an atom have quantized energy levels. That is, they can only exist in specific energy states, and they can only transition between them by gaining or losing precise amounts of energy. Lyman-alpha radiation is produced when electrons in hydrogen atoms drop from the second-lowest to the lowest energy level. The precise amount of energy lost is released as light with a particular wavelength, in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum, which astronomers can detect with space telescopes or on Earth in the case of redshifted objects. For LAB-1, at redshift of z~3, the Lyman-alpha light is seen as visible light.

One of the largest Lyman-alpha Blobs known, and the most thoroughly studied, is SSA22-Lyman-alpha blob 1, or LAB-1. Embedded in the core of a huge cluster of galaxies in the early stages of formation, it was the very first such object to be discovered — in 2000 — and is located so far away that its light has taken about 11.5 billion years to reach us.

A team of astronomers, led by Jim Geach, from the Centre for Astrophysics Research of the University of Hertfordshire, UK, has now used ALMA unparalleled ability to observe light from cool dust clouds in distant galaxies to peer deeply into LAB-1. This allowed them to pinpoint and resolve several sources of submillimeter emission.

Computer simulation above of a Lyman-alpha Blob - This rendering shows a snapshot from a cosmological simulation of a Lyman-alpha Blob similar to LAB-1. This simulation tracks the evolution of gas and dark matter using one of the latest models for galaxy formation running on the NASA Pleiades supercomputer. This view shows the distribution of gas within the dark matter halo, color coded so that cold gas (mainly neutral hydrogen) appears red and hot gas appears white. Embedded at the centre of this system are two strongly star-forming galaxies, but these are surrounded by hot gas and many smaller satellite galaxies that appear as small red clumps of gas here. Lyman-alpha photons escape from the central galaxies and scatter off the cold gas associated with these satellites to give rise to an extended Lyman-alpha Blob. Credit: J.Geach/D.Narayanan/R.Crain |

They then combined the ALMA images with observations from the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument mounted on the VLT, which map the Lyman-alpha light. This showed that the ALMA sources are located in the very heart of the Lyman-alpha Blob, where they are forming stars at a rate over 100 times that of the Milky Way.

Infographic explaining how a Lyman-alpha Blob functions - This diagram explains how a Lyman-alpha Blob, one of the largest and brightest objects in the Universe, shines. Credit: ESO/J. Geach | Download image

Deep imaging with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and spectroscopy at the W. M. Keck Observatory showed in addition that the ALMA sources are surrounded by numerous faint companion galaxies that could be bombarding the central ALMA sources, helping to drive their high star formation rates.

The team then turned to a sophisticated simulation of galaxy formation to demonstrate that the giant glowing cloud of Lyman-alpha emission can be explained if ultraviolet light produced by star formation in the ALMA sources scatters off the surrounding hydrogen gas. This would give rise to the Lyman-alpha Blob we see.

Giant space blob glows from within - This image shows one of the largest known single objects in the Universe, the Lyman-alpha blob LAB-1. This picture is a composite of two different images taken with the FORS instrument on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) — a wider image showing the surrounding galaxies and a much deeper observation of the blob itself at the center made to detect its polarization. The intense Lyman-alpha ultraviolet radiation from the blob appears green after it has been stretched by the expansion of the Universe during its long journey to Earth. These new observations show for the first time that the light from this object is polarized. This means that the giant "blob" must be powered by galaxies embedded within the cloud. Credit: ESO/M. Hayes

Jim Geach, lead author of the new study, explains: “Think of a streetlight on a foggy night — you see the diffuse glow because light is scattering off the tiny water droplets. A similar thing is happening here, except the streetlight is an intensely star-forming galaxy and the fog is a huge cloud of intergalactic gas. The galaxies are illuminating their surroundings.”

Closing in on a giant space blob - This sequence of images closes in on one of the largest known single objects in the Universe, the Lyman-alpha blob LAB-1. Observations with the ESO VLT show for the first time that this giant "blob" must be powered by galaxies embedded within the cloud. The image on the left shows a wide view of the constellation of Aquarius. The two images at the upper right were created from photographs taken through blue and red filters and forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2. The two images at the lower right were taken using the FORS camera on the VLT. Credit: ESO/A. Fujii/M. Hayes and Digitized Sky Survey 2

Understanding how galaxies form and evolve is a massive challenge. Astronomers think Lyman-alpha Blobs are important because they seem to be the places where the most massive galaxies in the Universe form. In particular, the extended Lyman-alpha glow provides information on what is happening in the primordial gas clouds surrounding young galaxies, a region that is very difficult to study, but critical to understand.

What's exciting about these blobs is that we are getting a rare glimpse of what's happening around these young, growing galaxies. For a long time, the origin of the extended Lyman-alpha light has been controversial. But with the combination of new observations and cutting-edge simulations, we think we have solved a 15-year-old mystery: Lyman-alpha Blob-1 is the site of formation of a massive elliptical galaxy that will one day be the heart of a giant cluster. We are seeing a snapshot of the assembly of that galaxy 11.5 billion years ago.”

The Daily Galaxy via ALMA Observatory

Evidence of Enormous First Stars of the Cosmos Found in Primordial Galaxy

Massive Explosions of Exiled Stars in Intergalactic Space --"Far from Their Home Galaxies"

A Voyage to Alpha Centauri's Habitable Planet in the Year 3030 (VIDEO)

The Quest to Discover Proxima B --Closest Habitable Planet to Our Solar System (VIEW/European Southern Observatory Video) - The Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries Channel

Strange Triple Asteroid System Observed

NEWS ALERT! ESO Unveils 'Clear Evidence' of Earth-Like Planet in Habitable Zone Orbiting Proxima Centauri --"Only 4.25 Light-Years Away"

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NASA Scientists Attempt to Decipher Mystery Cloud on Saturn's Titan --"Appeared Out of Thin Air"

"The appearance of this ice cloud goes against everything we know about the way clouds form on Titan," said Carrie Anderson, a CIRS co-investigator at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of the study.

The puzzling appearance of an ice cloud seemingly out of thin air has prompted NASA scientists to suggest that a different process than previously thought—possibly similar to one seen over Earth's poles—could be forming clouds on Saturn's moon Titan. Located in Titan's stratosphere, the cloud is made of a compound of carbon and nitrogen known as dicyanoacetylene (C4N2), an ingredient in the chemical cocktail that colors the giant moon's hazy, brownish-orange atmosphere.

Decades ago, the infrared instrument on NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft spotted an ice cloud just like this one on Titan. What has puzzled scientists ever since is this: they detected less than 1 percent of the dicyanoacetylene gas needed for the cloud to condense.

Recent observations from NASA's Cassini mission yielded a similar result. Using Cassini's composite infrared spectrometer, or CIRS—which can identify the spectral fingerprints of individual chemicals in the atmospheric brew—researchers found a large, high-altitude cloud made of the same frozen chemical. Yet, just as Voyager found, when it comes to the vapor form of this chemical, CIRS reported that Titan's stratosphere is as dry as a desert.

The typical process for forming clouds involves condensation. On Earth, we're familiar with the cycle of evaporation and condensation of water. The same kind of cycle takes place in Titan's troposphere—the weather-forming layer of Titan's atmosphere—but with methane instead of water.

A different condensation process takes place in the stratosphere—the region above the troposphere—at Titan's north and south winter poles. In this case, layers of clouds condense as the global circulation pattern forces warm gases downward at the pole. The gases then condense as they sink through cooler and cooler layers of the polar stratosphere.

Either way, a cloud forms when the air temperature and pressure are favorable for the vapor to condense into ice. The vapor and the ice reach a balance point—an equilibrium—that is determined by the air temperature and pressure. Because of this equilibrium, scientists can calculate the amount of vapor where ice is present.

This graphic illustrates how scientists think "solid state" chemistry may be taking place in ice particles that form clouds in the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/GSFC

"For clouds that condense, this equilibrium is mandatory, like the law of gravity," said Robert Samuelson, an emeritus scientist at Goddard and a co-author of the paper.

But the numbers don't compute for the cloud made from dicyanoacetylene. The scientists determined that they would need at least 100 times more vapor to form an ice cloud where the cloud top was observed by Cassini's CIRS.

One explanation suggested early on was that the vapor might be present, but Voyager's instrument wasn't sensitive enough in the critical wavelength range needed to detect it. But when CIRS also didn't find the vapor, Anderson and her Goddard and Caltech colleagues proposed an altogether different explanation. Instead of the cloud forming by condensation, they think the C4N2 ice forms because of reactions taking place on other kinds of ice particles. The researchers call this "solid-state chemistry," because the reactions involve the ice, or solid, form of the chemical.

The first step in the proposed process is the formation of ice particles made from the related chemical cyanoacetylene (HC3N). As these tiny bits of ice move downward through Titan's stratosphere, they get coated by hydrogen cyanide (HCN). At this stage, the ice particle has a core and a shell comprised of two different chemicals. Occasionally, a photon of ultraviolet light tunnels into the frozen shell and triggers a series of chemical reactions in the ice. These reactions could begin either in the core or within the shell. Both pathways can yield dicyanoacteylene ice and hydrogen as products.

The researchers got the idea of solid-state chemistry from the formation of clouds involved in ozone depletion high above Earth's poles. Although Earth's stratosphere has scant moisture, wispy nacreous clouds (also called polar stratospheric clouds) can form under the right conditions. In these clouds, chlorine-bearing chemicals that have entered the atmosphere as pollution stick to crystals of water ice, resulting in chemical reactions that release ozone-destroying chlorine molecules.

"It's very exciting to think that we may have found examples of similar solid-state chemical processes on both Titan and Earth," said Anderson.

The researchers suggest that, on Titan, the reactions occur inside the ice particles, sequestered from the atmosphere. In that case, dicyanoacetylene ice wouldn't make direct contact with the atmosphere, which would explain why the ice and the vapor forms are not in the expected equilibrium.

"The compositions of the polar stratospheres of Titan and Earth could not differ more," said Michael Flasar, CIRS principal investigator at Goddard. "It is amazing to see how well the underlying physics of both atmospheres has led to analogous cloud chemistry."

The Daily Galaxy via NASA

"There Might be Civilizations Lurking Outside Galaxy Boundaries" -NASA

"Titan's Alien Ice Cloud Similar to Those Above Earth's Poles" --NASA (Weekend Feature)

NASA's Cassini Mission to Wrap Its Epic Discoveries at Saturn --"Will Leap Over the Rings for a Last Titan flyby"

NASA's Stunning Video of Cassini Mission's Flybys of Saturn --"Preping for Final Dives between Planet and its Rings to Study Never Seen Before Phenomena"

NASA: "There Might Be Civilizations Existing in Cold Dark Space Beyond Galaxies" (Weekend Feature)

Cassini Flyby of Saturn's Titan Reveals Strikingly Earth-like Features

astronomy

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NASA to Unveil New Discoveries About Jupiter's Ocean Moon Europa

NASA will announce new findings about Jupiter's ocean-harboring moon Europa during a news conference at 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT) on Monday (Sept. 26). "Astronomers will present results from a unique Europa observation campaign that may be related to the presence of a subsurface ocean on Europa," NASA officials wrote in a media advisory Tuesday (Sept. 20).

In 2013, huge active plumes containing water vapor being released from the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa were discovered shooting up 1200 kilometers. This sensational find was made using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Europa has been a focus of extraterrestrial research for some time, as there were clear indications that it harbors a liquid vast ocean beneath its icy crust. The plumes were not sighted again, however. The involvement of Hubble raises the possibility that Europa's elusive plumes may finally have been spotted again.

The new information comes via NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, agency officials said. We'll post the conference live at dailygalaxy.com via NASA TV

The participants in Monday's briefing are:

Paul Hertz, director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

William Sparks, astronomer with the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.

Britney Schmidt, assistant professor at the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.

Jennifer Wiseman, senior Hubble project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

VIEW MONDAY's CONFERENCE On NASA TV HERE

Astrobiologists regard Europa as one of the solar system's best bets to host alien life.

The existence of the plumes "is the kind of thing that could have a profound impact on how we explore Europa," Curt Niebur, outer planets program scientist at NASA headquarters, said during a NASA planetary sciences subcommittee meeting. "With an ocean that is tens of kilometers below the ice, most likely, if you can have a plume that's possibly bringing material from that ocean up to orbit, well, that's going to affect how you explore," Niebur added.

Lorenz Roth of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas and Joachim Saur of the University of Cologne used the Hubble to prove that there is water vapour erupting near its south pole. The water plumes are in comparison to earth geysers immensely large and reach heights of approximately 200 km. Europa has a circumference of 3200 kilometers, comparable in size with the Moon.

But new Hubble observations in January and February of this year showed no signs of the massive plumes. "It could be just the way that we use the auroral emissions coming from those plumes at the UV [ultraviolet] wavelengths of light that we use with Hubble," discovery team member Kurt Retherford, of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, told Space.com. "These things depend on Jupiter's plasma environment," Retherford added. "Maybe there were just a lot of particles, atoms, getting excited by electrons and ions in Europa's atmosphere, more so than at other times, and [they] just lit up the plumes more than they usually do."

Retherford added that the plumes may sometimes simply be too small to see by the scientists who are relying on the Earth-orbiting Hubble to study the features on Europa, Retherford said. Another possibility Retherford noted is that the geysers don't exist, that the detection by Hubble, which was based primarily on observations the telescope made in December 2012, was an artifact or misinterpretation of some sort. "The best explanation still is plumes for that dataset, no doubt about it," he said

“Water is generally considered a basic prerequisite for life at least as we know it on earth,” said Lorenz Roth, who was in charge of analysing the 2013 Hubble observations and who has been working at the Southwest Research Institute in America. “For this reason, the discovery of a water vapour plumes on the moon Europa has increasingly become a focus of extraterrestrial research.” The plumes eject material from the surface which will make further investigations of the moon Jupiter much easier in the future.

“We have been advancing the search for water and water plumes with multiple Hubble campaigns,” says Joachim Saur. “However, it was only after a camera on the Hubble Space Telescope in one of the last Space Shuttle Missions was repaired that we were able to achieve enough sensitivity to observe the fountains.”

The water plumes could only be seen in the observations when Europe was in a position in its orbit where the moon was furthest away from Jupiter. That means that the activity of the fountain varies temporally. Europa's orbit is not quite circular but slightly elliptical. When Europa is furthest away from Jupiter in its orbit, the tidal forces cause the huge fractures in Europa's ice surface to widen from which presumably the vapour is released.

Similar plumes of water vapor were discovered by the Cassini spacecraft on the Saturnian moon Enceladus. The activities there are similar to those on Europa during its orbit around its mother planet.

The Daily Galaxy via NASA and uni-koeln.de and space.com

Image Credit: K. Retherford, Southwest Research Institute, NASA/ESA/K.

Image of the Day --Rare Conjunction of Jupiter's Three Largest Moons

Vanished! Mystery of Europa's 200-Kilometer High Geysers (Today's Most Popular)

NASA VIDEO: Close-Up of Pluto's Moon Charon --Does It Harbor a Buried Ocean?

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Building a grand photography collection for the new African American museum

Photograph of the Stevens Family outside their home in Linn Creek, Missouri, ca. 1905 by an unidentified photographer. Silver and photographic gelatin on photographic paper
(Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of Jackie Bryant Smith)

Clutching a revolver against his chest, an unidentified African American Union soldier stares out from an 1861-1865 Civil War tintype. Barack and Michelle Obama relax together on a sofa in their Chicago home in a 1996 black and white portrait taken by Mariana Cook. An African American mother smiles joyfully at her newborn baby in a 1952 photograph by Robert Gailbraith from the series “Reclaiming Midwives: Stills from All My Babies.” Breathtaking, tragic, solemn, overwhelming, exuberant are but a few of the adjectives that try but fail to capture the radiance and breadth of the some 30,000 photographs now in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Started by curators Michèle Gates Moresi and Jacquelyn Serwer, this remarkable collection has lately been growing with the added expertise of Aaron Bryant, one of NMAAHC's curators, and Rhea Combs, head of the museum's Stafford Center for African American Media Arts. “Michelle, Jackie, Rhea and I work as a team, acquiring photographs for the museum,” Bryant explains. Other curators, however, also collect images relevant to their particular interests.

Here Smithsonian Insider asks Bryant a few questions about what type of photos he looks for and how he acquires them for the African American History and Culture Museum.

Portrait of a couple on a motorcycle outside of Anderson Photo Service studio ca. 1960, by Rev. Henry Clay Anderson. Silver and photographic gelatin on acetate film (Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture)

Q: Where do you find images for the collection?

Bryant: One way is to build relationships directly with photographers. Our job is to share history and preserve American legacies, and sharing and preserving the work of photographers who have documented our nation's culture and history is part of that.

Equally important, however, are the scores of donors who have reached out to the museum. You'd be surprised and touched by the number of people who have donated their collections, including family albums with images that extend as far back as the 19^th century.

The provenance and personal stories behind certain images, as well as the donors' reasons for wanting to donate, are incredibly moving. People supporting NMAAHC's vision by helping to build the museum through donating family treasures has real value to us. Our collection is like a national family album of sorts, with thousands of different branches in the family tree, and each one is significant to telling a broader story. Our donors become an important part of a national history, and the sense that the museum is working with a community of people as part of a national family aligns with our mission.

We've also gotten certain photographs from collectors, auction houses, and galleries. They've been instrumental in helping us identify specific, hard to find images that are essential to stories we want to tell.

Autographed photograph of LeRoi Jones, Jan. 31, 1962 by Carl Van Vechten. Silver and photographic gelatin on photographic paper. (Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture)

Q: Do you only collect originals?

Bryant: Yes. A photograph is actually an object in many ways. Just as museums are most interested in collecting original three-dimensional artifacts, we collect original photographs, negatives, digital negatives, or digital scans from negatives, depending on why and how the photo will be shared with the public. Antique and vintage photos and negatives, are different from the contemporary images that sometimes come to us as digital negatives from the photographer.

In addition to being an object, though, images are also archival documents. So we'd want to collect images as original archival material as well. Our collection of Robert Houston's images from his time at Resurrection City during the 1968 Poor People's Campaign is an example. In addition to the journal he kept at the time, we also have images he shot as a visual diary of his experiences with the poverty campaign. The collection includes vintage prints and slides. He made an earlier donation of high-resolution digital scans of negatives. As a museum operating in the 21^st century, we recognize that the original might also include digital files from digital cameras or high-resolution scans of negatives, which helps to stabilize images.

Views of Thomasville and Vicinity: 44 Weighing Cotton ca. 1895 by photographer A. W. Möller. Unidentified women and men. Albumen and silver on paper mounted on cardboard. (Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Norman and Sandra Lindley)

Q: Are you looking for images from specific periods in American history?

Bryant: We're building a collection that reflects America's history, African American culture, and a history of photography. So in addition to covering people, places, events, subjects, and time periods, the collection is also an evolutionary survey of photographic processes and mediums that cover a spectrum of time periods. The collection ranges from 19^th century daguerreotypes to digital images as recent as several months ago. In fact, we have cell phone images from Devin Allen as examples of a new photographic medium in art, social media, and photojournalism. Allen captured images of protests in Baltimore, which Time magazine and a number of other media outlets later published after they went viral online. Aperture recently published a few in its special issue “Vision & Justice,” which is getting lots of global attention in the field.

“Positive Reflections,” unidentified man, Oct. 16, 1995, by photographer Roderick Terry. Silver and photographic gelatin on photographic paper. (Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of Roderick Terry)

Our collection also houses traditional mediums like gelatin silver prints, magic lantern slides, carte-de-visites, cabinet cards, ambrotypes, tintypes, negatives and transparencies, and a host of other examples of how photography has evolved from its early history in the 1800s to today.

We're also considering the evolution of artistic genres, from Pictorialism and the painterly kinds of images of late 19thcentury early modernism to contemporary art photography, straight photography, portraiture, and abstraction. We extend beyond the historicity of social documentary and photojournalism a bit to include traditional genres and interesting hybrids, where images are created through innovative and unexpected mediums. Since the museum also collects visual art, artistic genres in photography is something we will consider more as we move forward.

In this tintype an unidentified African American Union soldier with a moustache and beard, holds a pistol across his chest. His buttons and belt buckle are hand-colored in gold paint. The hand-coloring on the buckle reads “Z O”. Thermoplastic case with brass hinges and red velvet liner. (Collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture)

My particular interests are in sociopolitical history, cultures of everyday life, and art photography. There are lots of photographers who create social documentary photography that's also considered art. Sometimes the purely social documentary images give us a lot of cultural and historical information.

Q: Please give an example?

Bryant: We've published four books focusing on the museum's photography collection and will soon publish a fifth. The first book was Through the African American Lens. In our second book, Civil Rights and the Promise of Equality, there is a photo by James H. Wallace taken in 1964 of students in Chapel Hill, N.C. participating in a July 4, protest against segregation. In looking at the image, we'd consider ways the photograph might document an American story from different perspectives, including African Americans. It's 1964. What was Chapel Hill like at that time? What was North Carolina as a cultural and ideological space like for people at that time? And what was the university like for students, as well as for the people working or living in the area?

Photograph of Senator Henry Hall Falkener and family ca. 1905. Unidentified photographer. Silver and photographic gelatin on photographic paper. (Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of Margaret Falkener DeLorme, Waldo C. Falkener, Cameron S. Falkener and Gilbert E. DeLorme)

In North Carolina by 1963, Bob Jones was leading the emergence of one of the largest Klan groups in the country. The Klan had become notorious in North Carolina and the effects of their presence were felt generations later. So the Chapel Hill images have a certain context that goes beyond the two-dimensionality of the photograph.

No matter the period, it's the history surrounding the image that helps us tell American stories. African American perspectives can be the prism for interpreting the experience. Then there might be a broader contextualization in which the photo and the moment it captures is placed within a larger history. What led to that particular protest in Chapel Hill, for example, and how might the moment reflect 1964 America?

Q: How is your work different than someone from another history museum?

Bryant: The museum and its collection were built from scratch. We started without a collection or facility, but now we have a museum on the National Mall with roughly 30,000 images. We've collected to build a foundation for the photography collection, while hoping to add to the canons in various fields in a way that shifts cultural paradigms and historical narratives.

We also were aware that we were building a 21^st century collection for a museum that would serve several generations. So while collecting to preserve a distant past, we also collect to reflect contemporary histories and issues as well. We built the collection with the idea that we are about the present and the future, as well as the past.

Untitled (photograph from the Film & Photo League Archive) by unidentified photographer, 1931 1936. Silver and photographic gelatin on photographic paper. (Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture)

Q: What is one of your favorite recent acquisitions?

Bryant: We recently accessioned photographs of Black Lives Matter protests in different cities, including Ferguson and Baltimore. This would be a case in which we accessioned images with history, the present, and the future in mind.

The photographs were taken by Zun Lee, Sheila Pree Bright, Jermaine Gibbs, and Devin Allen. Allen is the millennial sensation, whose images of unrest in Baltimore went viral on social media. Allen democratized photography in a way that impacted the field for future generations, using social media, rather than mainstream media, as a voice and platform. Jermaine Gibbs is a commercial photographer in Baltimore, who also captured images of the city's unrest. Zun Lee and Shelia Pree Bright have also gotten media attention in recent years as part of a new generation of socially conscious photographers. They are redefining traditions. Sheila is known for her series 1960NOW! and Plastic Bodies, while Zun has received recognition for his series of found Polaroids, Fade Resistance, as well as his Father Figure series. Acquisitions that involve contemporary social histories, while working with living photographers like these, are exciting.

However, another one of my favorite acquisitions was also one of my first acquisitions for the museum. Our chief curator, Jackie Serwer, and I met with a donor, Simone Durrah Logan, who wanted to donate her family photos from the 19^th and early 20^th century. They were a wedding gift from her dad. Most of the images were taken in Yankton, S.D.

Few people think about the history of African Americans in places like North and South Dakota during Reconstruction. When we think of African American history, we often think of the east coast, but African Americans were building communities and creating cultures all over the country. Simone's family images help us to create new narratives and perspectives and share stories about what attracted communities of African Americans out west following Emancipation.

Ambrotype of Frederick Douglass, 1855-1865, by an unidentified photographer. Collodion and silver on glass photographic plates, leather. (Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture)

Q: How is a strong photo collection important to a museum?

Bryant: Images have power. As a form of language, visual data influences the way we create social meaning and share cultural knowledge. Seeing and then interpreting what we see is critical to our understanding the world from a particular lens or worldview.

Additionally, images have an ability to communicate beyond the power or necessity of words. It is true that a picture can be worth a thousand words, particularly in contemporary cultures that are visually driven. Images offer “thick descriptions” of people, events, places, and particular moments in time. It's why social media is so popular and instrumental in present-day cultures.

Images also offer first-person perspectives on historical events that help us see and understand from different points of view. Photographs allow us to immerse ourselves in the histories and moments caught in a camera's lens.

Photographs can be objects or works of art. They can be a form of archival texts that document time, or windows into different cultures and worlds from our past. I like to think that photographs can bear witness. They provide visual evidence of a culture as a testament to our nation's history.

The post Building a grand photography collection for the new African American museum appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

culture

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Tell us about the craziest major entertainment production experience you had.

When working on these major entertainment productions, you are asked to produce someone else's vision while also applying your own style to the experience. How do you balance these two responsibilities?

Do you find it is harder or easier to find work without a set style?

Why do you begin creating these virtual worlds by hand?

In addition to your current work for Elastic Pictures, you have created independent shorts like Portal No Escape. Do you approach these indie projects differently?

How does your work for these major entertainment properties compare to your work for lesser known clients, and how important is it for you to have major clients like movie studios on your resume?

How has your relationship to your art changed as a result?

What would you say to someone who feels they need blockbuster projects to define their career as a success?

Q: Where do you find images for the collection?

Q: Do you only collect originals?

Q: Are you looking for images from specific periods in American history?

Q: Please give an example?

Q: How is your work different than someone from another history museum?

Q: What is one of your favorite recent acquisitions?

Q: How is a strong photo collection important to a museum?

In addition to your current work for Elastic Pictures, you have created independent shorts like ***Portal No Escape*. Do you approach these indie projects differently?**