Herschel’s View Of New Stars And Molecular Clouds By Europeanspaceagency

Tracking the Sun’s Cycles

Scientists just announced that our Sun is in a new cycle.

Solar activity has been relatively low over the past few years, and now that scientists have confirmed solar minimum was in December 2019, a new solar cycle is underway — meaning that we expect to see solar activity start to ramp up over the next several years.

The Sun goes through natural cycles, in which the star swings from relatively calm to stormy. At its most active — called solar maximum — the Sun is freckled with sunspots, and its magnetic poles reverse. At solar maximum, the Sun’s magnetic field, which drives solar activity, is taut and tangled. During solar minimum, sunspots are few and far between, and the Sun’s magnetic field is ordered and relaxed.

Understanding the Sun’s behavior is an important part of life in our solar system. The Sun’s violent outbursts can disturb the satellites and communications signals traveling around Earth, or one day, Artemis astronauts exploring distant worlds. Scientists study the solar cycle so we can better predict solar activity.

Measuring the solar cycle

Surveying sunspots is the most basic of ways we study how solar activity rises and falls over time, and it’s the basis of many efforts to track the solar cycle. Around the world, observers conduct daily sunspot censuses. They draw the Sun at the same time each day, using the same tools for consistency. Together, their observations make up the international sunspot number, a complex task run by the World Data Center for the Sunspot Index and Long-term Solar Observations, at the Royal Observatory of Belgium in Brussels, which tracks sunspots and pinpoints the highs and lows of the solar cycle. Some 80 stations around the world contribute their data.

Credit: USET data/image, Royal Observatory of Belgium, Brussels

Other indicators besides sunspots can signal when the Sun is reaching its low. In previous cycles, scientists have noticed the strength of the Sun’s magnetic field near the poles at solar minimum hints at the intensity of the next maximum. When the poles are weak, the next peak is weak, and vice versa.

Another signal comes from outside the solar system. Cosmic rays are high-energy particle fragments, the rubble from exploded stars in distant galaxies that shoot into our solar system with astounding energy. During solar maximum, the Sun’s strong magnetic field envelops our solar system in a magnetic cocoon that is difficult for cosmic rays to infiltrate. In off-peak years, the number of cosmic rays in the solar system climbs as more and more make it past the quiet Sun. By tracking cosmic rays both in space and on the ground, scientists have yet another measure of the Sun’s cycle.

Since 1989, an international panel of experts—sponsored by NASA and NOAA—meets each decade to make their prediction for the next solar cycle. The prediction includes the sunspot number, a measure of how strong a cycle will be, and the cycle’s expected start and peak. This new solar cycle is forecast to be about the same strength as the solar cycle that just ended — both fairly weak. The new solar cycle is expected to peak in July 2025.

Learn more about the Sun’s cycle and how it affects our solar system at nasa.gov/sunearth.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

Gabriella Mistral nebula by AstroCapetown

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As promised, it’s finally here! Thank you to all of my patrons for not only the support that made this possible, but for giving me the confidence to work on a big project like this.

Rather than providing any drawing instruction, what this writeup aims to do is help you learn to unpack the decisions being made in a given composition, and articulate what elements in a piece are responsible for its impact. Being able to isolate these qualities in your own art and art that inspires you opens up avenues for improvement regardless of medium, style, or technical skill. This is the first of hopefully many PWYW art ‘tutorials’ from me. 

I hope you all enjoy! 

i made my first infographic on a topic ive been very interested in lately: wings! ive seen a lot of anatomical sins relating to wings lately (i am not exempt from this) particuarly involving pterosaurs so i put this together to help artists who may be struggling with drawing wings. enjoy. i am also open to criticism on anatomy or errors

Art Tips for Vibrant Lighting

Some tips and tricks for getting glowy, beautiful, vibrant lighting effects…especially in traditional art, with no ctrl+z! The example piece is a watercolor work in progress of mine and, if you’re familiar with watercolor, you know it’s super unforgiving. What you put down stays!

Tip 1: Create a thumbnail

Do a very loose, messy sketch of your illustration. This helps define the composition, but it can also help you pick where your light is coming from and what colors you’ll use for it. This way, you can reference the light source and colors while you’re painting!

Even if you’re working digitally, this creates a great color key you can turn back to. You can make a thumbnail digitally or traditionally. 

This thumbnail only took about 20 minutes…and it’s saved so many headaches during the painting process. 

When you have a thumbnail, the rest of your painting is just a translation of those colors with a better technique. 

Tips:

Feel free to make many thumbnails! This is the easiest step to revise and repeat.

Use a photo for inspiration for your color scheme. I used clouds in the evening as color references. 

Play around with layers and effects (like overlay, multiply). This can help you figure out new colors that you can then try to capture traditionally!

Tip 2: Don’t forget about your lines!

Line art is important for gradients! I did mine first, so I had to consider the glow effect too. It’s a bit blurry (as its a screenshot from a reel, lol), but you can see yellows to dark browns and blacks. This established the glow from the start!

Tips:

Consider using a media you can get gradients in. I used acryla gouache here, but ink, watercolor, and even markers can work well! 

If it’s hard to visualize highlights in line art, do the lines after with pen or paint! Adding shadows and highlights that way can be easier. 

Tip 3: Start with big gradients first

Once you have your sketch on paper finished, start with large gradients! This helps define your light source and keep your whole composition making sense. 

Here, I started with the background sky, then added in the shadow coming off the wing before doing anything else. Take note of how helpful the thumbnail was in helping me lay this all out, too!

Tip 4: Think warm to cool

See how both the hair and wings move from warm (yellow/browns) to cool colors (blues, payne’s grey)? This is a surefire way to keep the strong light source and make it look like the light is glowing!

Tips:

This is all about keeping the colors close to your light source, so if your light source is cool (like the moon), your highlights are cool and your shadows are warm tones. The key is just to keep it consistent! 

Lighting isn’t just light to dark gradients. It’s also warm to cool/cool to warm!

Think about all the spots the light catches (like that one front feather on the left top). It takes a lot of thinking through, but it’ll make a huge impact! (Remember, you can always revisit your thumbnail or add more details in there)

Don’t forget about reflected light, bouncing off another surface. It’ll be more subtle than the main light source, but still there!

Final Tips:

Love those gradients! Watercolor is meant for beautiful gradients, so use multiple colors for a glow. The feathers in the light go from yellow ochre to prussian blue to payne’s grey.

Start with the highlights first, then work into the shadows! Above, the skin isn’t even painted with shadows yet, because I wanted to get the lighting first.

This is just a WIP right now, but I hope these tips help! If you want to follow, I’ll be posting more progress pics (and the finished illustration soon too). :D

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Ice age children frolicked in 'giant sloth puddles' 11,000 years ago, footprints reveal

More than 11,000 years ago, young children trekking with their families through what is now White Sands National Park in New Mexico discovered the stuff of childhood dreams: muddy puddles made from the footprints of a giant ground sloth.

Few things are more enticing to a youngster than a muddy puddle. The children — likely four in all — raced and splashed through the soppy sloth trackway, leaving their own footprints stamped in the playa — a dried up lake bed. Those footprints were preserved over millennia, leaving evidence of this prehistoric caper, new research finds.

The finding shows that children living in North America during the Pleistocene epoch (2.6 million to 11,700 years ago) liked a good splash. “All kids like to play with muddy puddles, which is essentially what it is,” Matthew Bennett, a professor of environmental and geographical sciences at Bournemouth University in the U.K. who is studying the trackway, told Live Science. Read more.

Meet NGC 2841

Location: In the constellation Ursa Major

Type: Flocculent spiral galaxy

Discovered by: William Herschel

NGC 2841 is a beautiful example of a flocculent spiral galaxy – a type with discontinuous, featherlike, and patchy arms. A bright cusp of starlight distinguishes the galaxy's center from the dust lanes that outline the group of almost white middle-aged stars. The far younger blue stars trace the spiral arms.

Find out more information about NGC 2841 here.

Right now, the Hubble Space Telescope is exploring #GalaxiesGalore! Find more galaxy content and spectacular new images by following along on Hubble’s Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration; Acknowledgment: M. Crockett and S. Kaviraj (Oxford University, UK), R. O'Connell (University of Virginia), B. Whitmore (STScI), and the WFC3 Scientific Oversight Committee

a couple notes on how i think about lighting (& mattes) for storyboards that i made a while back while looking at student portfolios! 

Are you guys aware of chimney swifts??

They’re in the same order as hummingbirds and, in some positions, you can see the resemblance

But like… a hummingbird that’s cosplaying as a falcon.

Sleek. Efficient. Aerodynamic. Perfectly optimized.

Also they like to sleep in chimneys, hence the name, and when they perch they become very very flat

They also like to sleep in groups

Anyway 10/10 weird little beast. Love these little flat fuck hummingbird falcons