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| Watch this space | Sep 29, 2016 11:59 PM PDT | url |
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Added 1 new A* page:Another day with the barest whiff of a blog! What a sham! May not have any at all tomorrow (Friday I mean), but if not then I'll put something together on Saturday.
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| Can we Fall Back yet? I need another hour :P | Sep 28, 2016 11:54 PM PDT | url |
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Added 1 new A* page:It got late so now I'm just going to bed. : D
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| Giant China dish complete; Europa ice plumes? | Sep 27, 2016 9:58 PM PDT | url |
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Added 1 new A* page:A mini space news roundup!
- China's colossal radio telescope begins testing (BBC) - There's an impressive photo of the completed giant dish in this article—the thing is 500 meters across! : o It will "take three years to calibrate." (The next largest dish, in Puerto Rico, is a "mere" 305m.)
- Europa moon 'spewing water jets' (BBC) - Scientists used Hubble to spot spectroscopic readings of excess hydrogen and oxygen, suggestive of water spewing into space from Jupiter's moon Europa, back in 2013; Europa is thought to have a massive ocean beneath a maybe tens of kilometers thick ice crust. Now, scientists have used Hubble to look for water coming from Europa again, but this time observing the rim of the moon in ultraviolet light as it passed in front of Jupiter, and in ultraviolet they seemed to see "dark fingers" extending from the edge of the moon, in about the same area as the 2013 spectroscopic readings. These "fingers," then, are likely to be plumes of water ice, "several hundred kilometres in height," and quite possibly similar to ice plumes clearly photographed on Saturn's moon Enceladus. Europa's plumes appear to be sporadic, and the reason for that is as yet unexplained.
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| Got your Patreon e-book reward emails? | Sep 26, 2016 11:56 PM PDT | url |
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Added 1 new A* page:If you're in the monthly e-book reward group of supporters contributing to my Patreon campaign, and you *haven't* been getting an A* e-book download link from me in your email inbox each month, please let me know! (Unless I've already sent them all to you, in which case we'll just have to wait for a month in which I've made a brand new one. : ) One reader wasn't receiving the emails in some months for some reason we haven't quite pinned down yet; hopefully it wasn't something affecting anyone else, but if you haven't been getting those mails from me, hit me back (smbhax@gmail.com) and I'll get you caught up.
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| Sometimes you just wanna wear a robe | Sep 24, 2016 8:24 PM PDT | url |
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Added 1 new A* page:Here's a sketch I got to send to a reader for supporting the comic through my Patreon campaign : ) :
Thanks to everyone helping me out through Patreon! Even just a buck or two a month makes a big difference. : D
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| Phinney Center Gallery art show photos | Sep 22, 2016 10:45 PM PDT | url |
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Added 1 new A* page:I got back to the Phinney Center Gallery (6532 Phinney Ave N, Seattle, top floor (map)) to snap a few shots of the art installation they did for my art show with fellow Seattle artist Jessica Keteyian:
Pretty snazzy set-up they have there! There's a bunch more art in there hidden behind those fancy mobile display walls of theirs, and you'll just have to get down to the gallery to find it all. The show runs through the 30th, so you've got one more week to catch it!
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| Noiry noir noir | Sep 21, 2016 10:20 PM PDT | url |
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Added 1 new A* page:Here's an ink sketch I sent to a reader for supporting the comic through my Patreon campaign : ) :
Thank you very much! ^_^
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| Asymmetric launch, Gaia, Tiangong-2 | Sep 20, 2016 10:51 PM PDT | url |
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Added 1 new A* page:Space news has piled up on me a little bit so it's time for....space news roundup!
- Watch the launch of an asymmetric rocket (Ars Technica) - An Atlas V rocket only needed one strap-on booster to lift a satellite into orbit, and to compensate for the booster's one-sided weight, it had to gimbal (ie, pivot) its main thruster sideways a tad; an interesting launch style you don't see often!
- Gaia space telescope plots a billion stars (BBC) - The first load of data is back from the ESA's Gaia space telescope, giving the position and brightness of over a billion stars (or other sources of light) in unprecedented detail—so ground-breaking is Gaia's vision that 400 million of those objects had never been catalogued before. For 2 million of the objects, by comparing Gaia's readings with readings from its predecessor, Hipparcos (ESA), scientists were able to determine their distance and sideways motion; this type of information, combined with analysis of radial velocity (movement of stars as they turn toward or away from Gaia as they rotate around the galaxy), will allow scientists to construct a much more precise map of the galaxy, and one that includes where stars are going and where, by projecting their motion backwards, they came from, ie how the galaxy evolved. There is so much data that they have made it available on the web so the public can help sift through it. Gaia's 2 million object catalogue is already twice as precise and 20 times as big as Hipparcos', which has been the definitive reference catalogue for the past 20 years. Gaia's mission goal is to plot 1 billion objects fully—but interestingly, the satellite has found that there are more faint stars out there than had been previously thought, so its full catalogue—approximately yearly data updates are anticipated, with a little over two years left in its original mission duration—may end up consisting of 2-3 billion objects. (I wonder if these newly discovered faint stars account for any of the so-called "dark matter"?)
- China launches second trial space station (BBC) - China has put the Tiangong-2 space station into orbit; it follows a smaller test station, Tiangong-1, which went up in 2011 (and is expected to burn up in the atmosphere some time late next year). "Heavenly Palace 2" is 15 meters long, and will host two astronauts for a month, beginning in October. Tiangong-3, due to launch in 2022, will be 18.1 meters long, a full size prototype for the core module of an eventual modular space station.
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| I should just do dots for eyes | Sep 19, 2016 11:36 PM PDT | url |
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Added 1 new A* page:Bah, painting! I'm going to bed, I'm not even gonna cross-post this comic to all the various places I usually cross-post 'em, I'll just hafta do that in the morning. = P
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| Tiptoe, through the tulips~~ | Sep 17, 2016 12:37 AM PDT | url |
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Added 1 new A* page:Thanks to everyone supporting the comic through my Patreon campaign! : ) Here's a sketch I got to send to a reader for their support:
Thank you very much! : D
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| Well I'll keep tryin' | Sep 15, 2016 11:47 PM PDT | url |
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Added 1 new A* page:I just really want to be able to draw in that brushy, angular, sleek, flat, lean, Bernie Fuchs '50s-'70s illustration style. (Well, he had a lot of styles—I would pretty much settle for any of 'em. : P)
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| Glowy glow glow | Sep 14, 2016 10:44 PM PDT | url |
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Added 1 new A* page:Readers keep A* going through the A* Patreon campaign! Yay! Here's a sketch I got to send to a reader for their support:
Thank you very much! : ))
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| Scientists debate odds of finding alien life | Sep 13, 2016 7:11 PM PDT | url |
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Added 1 new A* page:Honza dropped a link on the forum to an article by my alma mater, the University of Chicago, called something like Lonely planets: Astronomers and planetary scientists debate if and when we’ll find extraterrestrial life—and that's pretty much what goes on, as those learned individuals are tasked with debating whether or not mankind will find extraterrestrial life by the year 2042. The U of C scientists in the discussion raise a number of interesting points I hadn't heard before, including:
- A more powerful telescope than any yet underway, for instance the "12-meter ultraviolet-optical-infrared observatory proposed by the Associated Universities for Research in Astronomy for development in the 2030s," would be necessary to be able to detect telltale traces of life in the atmosphere of a planet in another solar system directly; ammonia might be one telltale gas to look for.
- Nearby planets and moons in our own solar system "have had all the prerequisites for life in just the right conditions for millions of years, and still no life has arisen," suggesting that life as we know it may—for reasons not fully understood yet—be rather rare, "spread out across swaths of lifeless space too vast to overcome any time soon."
If those little snippets tickle your fancy, you'll probably find the whole article a pretty good read. Thanks for the link, Honza!
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| That one burning eye | Sep 12, 2016 9:14 PM PDT | url |
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Added 1 new A* page:Readers keep this comic going in a bunch of ways, and one of the most important is monthly support through my Patreon campaign, for which I also get to give out monthly rewards, one of which was this sketch for a reader a few months back:
Thank you! Your support—no matter how small!!—makes a big difference to me!
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| Well that was quite an art show reception | Sep 10, 2016 12:18 AM PDT | url |
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Added 1 new A* page:Thanks everyone who came to my art show reception in Seattle's Phinney Ridge neighborhood tonight! I like to try to get photos of the gallery space and the art, and usually I can get a clear photo with nobody in it at some point in the evening, but tonight's event was pretty much packed the entire time! : o A lot of that was due to the other artist in the show, Jessica Keteyian, having an absolute ton of appreciative friends coming by : ), but also there was a lively farmer's market in the parking lot (I was *so* wrong about there being plenty of parking, although there was just a bit left in the lower parking lot : oooo), and cross traffic from that, not to mention people doing the Phinneywood Art Walk. There were improvisational performance art pieces in the middle of the gallery, loads of food, and my goodness but wasn't it quite the Friday evening cultural hootenanny!
So that's the blow-out for the reception, the good news if you missed it but would still like to check out the show is that the art stays on the walls for the entire rest of the month of September—that's through Friday, September 30th, the last day of the month—and you can just pop in any time the Phinney Center is open (9am-10pm M-F, 9-2 Sat; gallery is on the top floor!) to check it out.
If you can't make it, never fear! You can buy a lot of the comic and gallery art you see on this site directly through the site itself—look for the gold "original art" link right next to the art images—and the last week's worth of my latest A* page watercolor paintings are always up for auction on eBay starting at very affordable prices and I would love it if you bought them yay! : D
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| A* art show reception tonight in Seattle! | Sep 08, 2016 11:23 PM PDT | url |
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Added 1 new A* page:^ I was exposed to Gary Gygax's material at an impressionable age...
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Okay! Tomorrow/today, Friday the 9th, you can join me at the reception for my art show—packed with more A* art than I've ever shown before, I think!—from 7-9 pm at the Phinney Center Gallery in Seattle, in the Phinney Neighborhood Association building, top floor, 6532 Phinney Ave N (map). Here's the show blurb snapped directly from their web site (I hope they don't mind, but they did such a nice job with it!):
There will be lots of cool things to see, probably a little art talk, and mingling, and oh free refreshments of a highly refined nature! If you're in town and got nothing better to do, well just come on by! Oh and they have a big parking lot, so no problems there.
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Big thanks to my mom and dad with their help putting the show together! Actually, they did pretty much everything aside from the art itself, which is really just one part of what goes into these things. Oh and thanks also to my sister-in-law—it was a long time ago now but I believe she was the one who tipped me off to the call for artists the gallery put out last year. : )
Thanks too to the folks at the Phinney Neighborhood Association, they really went the extra mile as far as local art shows go, putting together some nice publicity, handling the hanging and labeling of the art themselves, and even slapping a fresh coat of paint on the gallery walls right before the show!
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| Juno's new sights & sounds of Jupiter! | Sep 07, 2016 9:53 PM PDT | url |
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Added 1 new A* page:Juno probe returns close-up Jupiter pictures said the BBC last week, and their article has those pictures: first-ever views of surprisingly smooth, blue, and unbanded poles, and a sweeping Jovian polar aurora in infrared. Awesome stuff! And in the included video, at about the 18-second mark you can hear radio waves picked up as Juno crossed through the gas giant's powerful magnetic field. Really eerie! : o
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| Philae is found! | Sep 06, 2016 9:41 PM PDT | url |
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Added 1 new A* page:They found it! The European Space Agency found their Philae lander (BBC), suspected lost in a dark ditch on comet 67P since taking a hard bounce on its historic landing in 2014! But the season has changed on the comet as it has approached and swung around the Sun, and now, with a little more light hitting the side of the comet where the probe was thought to have eventually come down, Philae's mothership, Rosetta, which has been orbiting the comet all this time, snapped a photo of the surface in which Philae could be seen, lying on its side in a steep ditch. (And you can see the photo for yourself in the linked article.) It's not longer a lost spacecraft! : ) And in actual science terms, although there's no chance of salvaging or reviving the little probe, knowing its position and orientation will help scientists make more accurate use of the data it returned in the 60 hours before its batteries ran out.
And there's one last big part of the mission soon to take place: on September 30th, Rosetta will plunge into the comet's surface, getting its final super-close-ups.
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| Practical mountain wear | Sep 03, 2016 4:58 PM PDT | url |
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Added 1 new A* page:A super-big thanks to everyone helping make this comic possible with their support through my Patreon campaign! ^_^ It makes a huge difference! Here's a sketch I sent to a reader as a reward for their support:
^ I drew this one before the beginning of this episode, so I took the opportunity to use it to do some concept work on Selenis' costume. Kind of a more casual sweater and slacks look : ) and a big triangular sword.
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Monday is a national holiday here in the USA so I'll be doing something other than making a new page for you : oo, but I'll be right back at it on Tuesday!
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| SpaceX rocket explodes in pre-launch testing | Sep 01, 2016 10:49 PM PDT | url |
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Added 1 new A* page:SpaceX's ambitious commercial space endeavor hit another hitch today when their latest rocket exploded during pre-launch testing at Cape Canaveral. The pad had been cleared for the test fire so nobody was hurt, but the rocket's satellite cargo was destroyed. SpaceX said "The anomaly originated around the upper stage oxygen tanks and occurred during propellant loading of the vehicle." Hopefully they'll figure out what went wrong so it won't happen again! More details, with photos and videos, are in the BBC article.
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