In a previous post I showed some of the beautiful new images of Pluto from New Horizon’s mission, coloured using the new Matplotlib perceptual colormaps:
More recently I was experimenting with Principal Component Analysis in scikit-learn, and one of the things I used it for was compression of some of these Pluto images. Below is an example of the first two components from the False Color Pluto image:
While on a flight to Denmark a couple of years ago I happened to read this interview with Swedish astronaut Christer Fuglesang. Towards the end he talks about feasibility (and proximity) of our future missions to the Moon. This subject always gest me excited. If there’s one thing I’m dying to see is a manned missions to the Moon and Mars in my lifetime (I was born in 1971, so I missed by a split hair the first Moon Landing).
I hope we do it soon Christer!
Why go back?
My personal take is that of the dreamer, the 12 years old: why go back to the Moon? Because it’s there…. I mean look at it (photo credits: my uncle, Andrea Niccoli)!!
Beautiful Moon. In evidence the Mare Crisium, and craters Cleomedes, Langrenus, and Vendelinus.
Beautiful red Moon.
Beautiful Moon. In evidence the Sinus Iridum in the top left, the Copernicus crater in the centre of the image, and the Apenninus Montes just North of it with the Eratosthenes crater.
Beautiful Moon. In evidence the Gassendi crater in the centre of the image, and the Tycho crater to the right with one of the Rays.
On a more serious note, this is what Lunar scientist Paul Spudis has to say about why we should go back:
Moon exploration resources, and educational and vintage material
In my post Our Earth truly is art I talked about Earth as Art, NASA’s e-book collection of wonderful satellite images of our planet, and posted my top 3 picks.
I’d like to pick up my Apps page, which I sort of abandoned a while back.
If you have any great app to recommend, I’d love to hear about it so please add them in the comment section to this post. I am looking for Apps for Android and iPhone/iPad in the following categories – ideally free or very low-cost, possibly open-source:
NASA has published a number of really good e-books on planetary science. Typically, each time I stumbled on one, I added a link on my Books page, but I could not skip writing about the latest one, which I discovered thanks to this post on FlowingData. It’s called Earth as Art, and it’s a fantastic book!
The pictures in this book are truly marvellous, and a thing of art. Here are my three favourites – I am so mesmerised by them I can’t stop looking (particularly the Ugab River one).
Enjoy. Check the book, and let me know which ones you like.
