Saturn at Equinox

Click the pic to enlarge

How would Saturn look if its ring plane pointed right at the Sun? Before last month, nobody knew. Every 15 years, as seen from Earth, Saturn's rings point toward the Earth and appear to disappear. The disappearing rings are no longer a mystery -- Saturn's rings are known to be so thin and the Earth is so near the Sun that when the rings point toward the Sun, they also point nearly edge-on at the Earth. Fortunately, in this third millennium, humanity is advanced enough to have a spacecraft that can see the rings during equinox from the side. Last month, that Saturn-orbiting spacecraft, Cassini, was able to snap a series of unprecedented pictures of Saturn's rings during equinox. A digital composite of 75 such images is shown above. The rings appear unusually dark, and a very thin ring shadow line can be made out on Saturn's cloud-tops. Objects sticking out of the ring plane are brightly illuminated and cast long shadows. Inspection of these images may help humanity understand the specific sizes of Saturn's ring particles and the general dynamics of orbital motion.

Sony Commercial for Magic Headphones

Director/Designs/Animaton/BGs: Kristofer Ström
VFX/Compositing/Animation: Eric Buchholtz
Music/Sound Effects: Douglas Holmquist
Producers: Bart Yates, Nicholas Wakeham
Studio: Varelsen

Shearing Time

Oliver Sacks on Visual Hallucinations... Including Cartoons!

The Crazy Art & Design of Jordy van den Nieuwendijk

The Art of Robert Burden

The Hubcap Creatures of Ptolemy Elrington

The Location Designs of Armand Serrano

Cookie Monster goes into Withdrawl

From 1990, the final appearance of my favorite Sesame Street comedy duo, Ernie (Jim Henson) and Cookie Monster (Frank Oz).

Of course I like Ernie & Bert, Kermit & Grover, and all of Jim & Frank's other great double acts, but there's something about seeing Ernie & Cookie together that I always really enjoyed.

Picture of the Day

Larry thinks of a good way to escape jury duty:

Pumuky's "Los enamorados" By Nacho Rodríguez & Gina Thorstensen

Infotoons by Lunchbreath

Image: Lunchbreath [Flickr]

The Road - Trailer 2

It's still hard to tell if The Road is going to be an overblown Roland Emmerich of a mess or a post-apocalyptic classic that will do its source material proud, but just from this new trailer I'm ready to give the film its first two awards.

Award 1: Best Score That Makes Me Think the Trailer Will End with Someone Landing on the Moon. I'm not sure if this is the film's actual score or a track lifted from a classic I'm failing to recognize, but hearing it has me on the edge of my seat waiting for that American flag to strike the lunar surface.

Award 2: Most Disarmingly Gratuitous Use of the Wilhelm Scream. If you're going to be that blatant about it, it should at least be followed by a cartoon "splat." Or maybe it was the not-so-famous Howie Scream, I don't know.