Breaking News & Random Musings on Space, Technology, Sci-Fi & the View From A Writer’s Window
Isn’t this just an astonishing image? We thought we knew Cassiopeia A, but we were wrong.
“Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) view of Cas A displays a very violent explosion at a resolution previously unreachable at these wavelengths. This high-resolution look unveils intricate details of the expanding shell of material slamming into the gas shed by the star before it exploded.” Learn much more about the image and the history of our study of Cas A, go here: https://esawebb.org/news/weic2330/
The Christmas gifts that will keep on giving! First The Abyss, now these beauties, both remastered for BluRay at long last. Mr. Jennsen and I are going to spend the next several months re-experiencing some of the best scifi TV has ever offered up.
P.S.: Remastering is not a magic bullet that transforms the content into "just like new" visuals. We've started with Farscape and, like The Abyss, the core cinematography - interior shots focused on the characters - looks excellent. The colors are vibrant and the visuals are sharp. What it doesn't do that much for are the special effects (also true for The Abyss); I suspect modernizing those would be a much larger project. However, I imagine that if I were to go back and watch the original DVDs, I would be blown away at how much better these look.
P.P.S: Yes, the Farscape box includes The Peacekeeper Wars (and new special features)! But make sure you get the 25th Anniversary Edition, as there are several collections out there that do not.
Mr. Jennsen and I had a date night Wednesday! One of my favorite movies has FINALLY been remastered in 4K, and they released it to selected theaters for one night only. Don’t fret if you didn’t know - the new version will be available to stream later this month, and a BluRay will be released in March 2024.
It looked gorgeous! Yes, at times the special effects heavy scenes showed their age, but the rest of the cinematography looked incredible - they definitely did far more than just slap a new label on it.
Hi! My newsletter provider has done a massive upgrade to their system, which means I’ve had to re-set up some things. For one, this email might look ever-so-slightly different (but not much). Also, you might see some of the same stories from the last email reposted here - this should be a one-time-only event as the system reboots where things stand.
If you see anything else funky, give me a shout. Thanks!
Fancy gifting your favorite Amaranthe fan with a personalized, signed paperback for Christmas? Get your orders in early, before the postal service totally melts down!
https://www.gsjennsen.com/paperback-store?category=Signed+Paperbacks
P.S.: It's 100% okay if your favorite Amaranthe fan is yourself.
P.P.S.: I have paperbacks of Medusa Falling and the Short Stories Collection as well - I just don't have handy pics of them.
I came upon this piece by Moody Blue on Deviant Art this morning. It is an almost perfect visualization of the Lake Lasai setting in Medusa Falling, as Marlee describes it. (I tried to create the scene in Midjourney but was never happy with the results - but this is it.)
Source: https://www.deviantart.com/.../MoodyBlue-Stock-108-997750857
No, not the mountains I usually spend time in! For Thanksgiving, I traveled back to the southeast and spent the weekend at a cabin in the North Carolina mountains with family. If you’re in the US, I hope your Thanksgiving was lovely, your company festive and your taste buds entertained!
Starship gets stacked ahead of its second test flight on Saturday!
From SpaceX: “This is another chance to put Starship in a true flight environment, maximizing how much we learn. Rapid iterative development is essential as we work to build a fully reusable launch system capable of carrying satellites, payloads, crew, and cargo to a variety of orbits and Earth, lunar, and Martian landing sites.”
See what I did there? ;)
From NASA: “For millennia, musicians have looked to the heavens for inspiration. Now a new collaboration is enabling actual data from NASA telescopes to be used as the basis for original music that can be played by humans.
Since 2020, the “sonification” project at NASA’s Chandra X-ray Center has translated the digital data taken by telescopes into notes and sounds. This process allows the listener to experience the data through the sense of hearing instead of seeing it as images, a more common way to present astronomical data.
A new phase of the sonification project takes the data into different territory. Working with composer Sophie Kastner, the team has developed versions of the data that can be played by musicians.”
Listen and learn more here.
Cuteness overload: Cassi just went to the beauty shop for the first ever time! The groomer said she was a Very Good Girl (I don't believe them, lol, but at least everyone survived).
P.S.: the bow was out and trashed in seconds.
Do you have a Spotify subscription? Well, as of today, you can use it to listen to audiobooks, including mine. Spotify Premium now comes with 15 hours a month of audiobook listening for no additional cost (you can also buy audiobooks a la carte). See all my audiobooks here: https://open.spotify.com/search/g.%20s.%20jennsen/audiobooks.
Noted: the Spotify interface for finding and browsing audiobooks is still really, really basic (you can't click an author or narrator name to see all their work, or sort by order in the series, for instance). It will improve, but until then, if you need a reminder, you can see my recommended reading/listening order here: https://www.gsjennsen.com/amaranthe-universe.
Does it seem like there's a lot of news about audiobooks lately? That's because there is! It's the hottest segment in the business, and the industry is undergoing rapid innovation (and a bit of turmoil). May you listen in interesting times.
Amen to this! I bought literally hundreds, if not a thousand or more, books at Waldenbooks from the ages of 5 to 17 (or rather my wonderfully indulgent and supportive parents did)! And when Waldenbooks didn't have what I wanted, I went downstairs to B. Dalton - because my local mall had BOTH OF THEM.
Those were truly the salad days...
“Heading to the mall today with my wife and many daughters.
I know they won’t be there, but I’d like to imagine that if I searched hard enough, I just might find a portal, or a secret door that leads to an area in the mall that has stores like this:”
This newly released image from the NASA Hubble Space Telescope shows the planet Jupiter in a color composite of ultraviolet wavelengths. Released in honor of Jupiter reaching opposition, which occurs when the planet and the Sun are in opposite sides of the sky, this view of the gas giant planet includes the iconic, massive storm called the “Great Red Spot.” Though the storm appears red to the human eye, in this ultraviolet image it appears darker because high altitude haze particles absorb light at these wavelengths. The reddish, wavy polar hazes are absorbing slightly less of this light due to differences in either particle size, composition, or altitude.
For more, go here: https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/hubble-provides-unique-ultraviolet-view-of-jupiter/
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has gazed at the Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant located 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Taurus. Since the recording of this energetic event in 1054 CE by 11th-century astronomers, the Crab Nebula has continued to draw attention and additional study as scientists seek to understand the conditions, behavior, and after-effects of supernovae through thorough study of the Crab, a relatively nearby example.
Now exquisite, never-before-seen details help unravel the supernova remnant’s puzzling history. For more, go here: https://www.nasa.gov/missions/webb/the-crab-nebula-seen-in-new-light-by-nasas-webb/
Juno just did a close fly-by of Jupiter’s moon Io (the most volcanically active world in the solar system), and here’s one of the first incredible images!
Raw image processed by Kevin M. Gill. Source
How incredibly lucky we are to have the Webb telescope in our lives, bringing us incredible images like this one! Damn, I love space.
What is it, besides breathtaking? M51, a nearby spiral galaxy (close enough to spot with binoculars if conditions are right), taken by Webb's Mid-Infrared Instrument.
See the article by the always great Phil Plait for all sorts of details on how the image was captured and what it actually shows us: https://badastronomy.substack.com/p/jwsts-view-of-the-magnificently-dusty
Anyone want to take a deep-dive into my weird brain? I'm thrilled to have been interviewed by awesome fantasy author C. Borden on her blog. We talk about the Amaranthe universe, Medusa Falling, Marlee as a character, sci-fi inspirations, what being a lawyer taught me about writing, doing conventions as an introvert, and much, much more.
https://authorcborden.com/2023/10/06/author-spotlight-g-s-jennsen/
Cassi would like to wish everyone a good day! Whatever awaits you this week, she knows you've got this!
If you are curious about the nuts-and-bolts of how ChatGPT and other LLMs work, this is a great article. Long, but written in an accessible and understandable way. It's pretty fascinating.
From Webb’s newest observation:
Herbig-Haro (HH) objects are luminous regions surrounding newborn stars, formed when stellar winds or jets of gas spewing from these newborn stars form shock waves colliding with nearby gas and dust at high speeds. This image of HH 211 from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope reveals an outflow from a Class 0 protostar, an infantile analog of our Sun when it was no more than a few tens of thousands of years old and with a mass only 8% of the present-day Sun (it will eventually grow into a star like the Sun).
The image showcases a series of bow shocks to the southeast (lower-left) and northwest (upper-right) as well as the narrow bipolar jet that powers them. Webb reveals this scene in unprecedented detail — roughly 5 to 10 times higher spatial resolution than any previous images of HH 211. The inner jet is seen to “wiggle” with mirror symmetry on either side of the central protostar. This is in agreement with observations on smaller scales and suggests that the protostar may in fact be an unresolved binary star.
Learn more: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2023/nasa-s-webb-snaps-supersonic-outflow-of-young-star
