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This week, India became the first Asian nation to reach Mars when its orbiter entered the planet’s orbit on Wednesday — and this is the picture that was seen around the world to mark this historic event. It shows a group of female scientists at the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) congratulating one another on the mission’s success.  The picture was widely shared on Twitter where Egyptian journalist and women’s rights activist Mona El-Tahawy tweeted: “Love this pic so much. When was the last time u saw women scientists celebrate space mission?”  In most mission room photos of historic space events or in films about space, women are rarely seen, making this photo both compelling and unique. Of course, ISRO, like many technical agencies, has far to go in terms of achieving gender balance in their workforce. As Rhitu Chatterjee of PRI’s The World observed in an op-ed, only 10 percent of ISRO’s engineers are female. This fact, however, Chatterjee writes, is “why this new photograph of ISRO’s women scientists is invaluable. It shatters stereotypes about space research and Indian women. It forces society to acknowledge and appreciate the accomplishments of female scientists. And for little girls and young women seeing the picture, I hope it will broaden their horizons, giving them more options for what they can pursue and achieve.”  To read Chatterjee’s op-ed on The World, visit http://bit.ly/1u3fvGZ Photo credit: Manjunath Kiran/AFP/Getty Images

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The New Inspiration Pad

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Woke

My piece inspired by The Fifth Element for The Fifth Element artbook. That movie was a staple on TV syndication as a kid and when it came on I never changed the channel. 

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What do leopard spots, striped marine angelfish, and sand dune ripples have in common? Their patterns are self-organizing Turing systems! Discovered by Alan Turing in the 1950s, these repeating natural patterns can be created by the interaction of two things that spread at different speeds, one faster than the other.

See how scientists are applying Turing’s theories today.

Gifs are from Creative Commons videos by Jonathan McCabe.

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Hello!

Here’s my really simple method for painting with watercolor! Hope someone finds this at least a little bit useful! ^^

(I apologize the typos (edit: damn there were STILL so many argh!) and possible bad grammar.)

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A couple of months ago I was talking to the ineffably lovely gingercatsneeze about Dishonored and the characters turning into animals. Following that, she did up these lovely animations. They take my breath away.

Posted with permission of the artist.

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Cassini Spacecraft Reveals 101 Geysers and More on Icy Saturn Moon

Scientists using mission data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft have identified 101 distinct geysers erupting on Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus. Their analysis suggests it is possible for liquid water to reach from the moon’s underground sea all the way to its surface. Over a period of almost seven years, Cassini’s cameras surveyed the south polar terrain of the small moon, a unique geological basin renowned for its four prominent “tiger stripe” fractures and the geysers of tiny icy particles and water vapor first sighted there nearly 10 years ago. The result of the survey is a map of 101 geysers, each erupting from one of the tiger stripe fractures, and the discovery that individual geysers are coincident with small hot spots. These relationships pointed the way to the geysers’ origin. Thanks to recent analysis of Cassini gravity data, the researchers concluded the only plausible source of the material forming the geysers is the sea now known to exist beneath the ice shell. They also found that narrow pathways through the ice shell can remain open from the sea all the way to the surface, if filled with liquid water. The fact that Enceladus’ sea is salty, laced with organic compounds, spouting into space, and maybe even rising up to the surface has raised this particular Saturnian moon as a major target for future exploration.

Cross-section of Ice Shell (Artist rendering) Credit: NASA JPL

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Ripley is my favorite heroine forever.

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Number One? Are we ready or not?

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Carlie and Lisa from My film, looking at, uh, dunno.

Bigger version at Deviantart

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Katie Brumbach was one of fourteen children born to circus performers Philippe and Johanna Brumbach. In her early years, Katie performed with her family. Katie’s father would offer one hundred marks to any man in the audience who could defeat her in wrestling no one ever succeeded in winning the prize. It was during one such performance that Katie met her husband of fifty-two years, Max Heymann.

Brumbach once defeated the famous strongman Eugene Sandow in weightlifting contest in New York. Katie lifted a weight of 300 pounds over her head, which Sandow only managed to lift to his chest. After this victory, she adopted the stage name “Sandwina” as a feminine derivative of Sandow.

Sandwina worked in the United States with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus for many years, until she was nearly 60. One of her standard performance feats was lifting her husband (who weighed 165 pounds) overhead with one hand. She performed many other feats, such as bending steel bars and resisting the pull of four horses. Sandwina’s record stood for many years until being eclipsed by women’s weightlifter Karyn Marshall in 1987.

Text from her Wikipedia page.

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Today there are 6 astronauts living and working in space and 4 under the sea, training: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/NEEMO/index.html

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WISE Reveals a Hidden Star Cluster

The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, has seen a cluster of newborn stars enclosed in a cocoon of dust and gas in the constellation Camelopardalis. The cluster, AFGL 490, is hidden from view in visible light by the cloud. But WISE’s infrared vision sees the glow of the dust itself, and penetrates this dust to see the infant stars within.

Not much is known about this stealthy star cluster. Its distance from Earth is estimated to be about 2,300 light-years. The portion of the star-forming nebula captured in this view stretches across about 62 light-years of space.

All four infrared detectors aboard WISE were used to make this mosaic. Color is representational: blue and cyan represent infrared light at wavelengths of 3.4 and 4.6 microns, which is dominated by light from stars. Green and red represent light at 12 and 22 microns, which is mostly light from warm dust.

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These photos are shadowgraphs of a hydrogen flame exploding inside a balloon. The shadowgraph optical technique highlights density and temperature variations through their effect on a fluid’s refractive index. Here we see that the hydrogen flame has a strong cellular structure and is more turbulent than a methane flame. The cellular structure is a sign of an instability in the curved flame front. The instability and accompanying cellular appearance are a result of the complicated transport and reaction of fuel and oxidizer inside the flame. (Photo credits: P. Julien et al.)

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The Sailor Scout, Fantasy RPG set!