If a starry night sky can be the stuff that paintings are made of – imagine a Starry Night full of a hundreds galactic images from the Hubble?
Alex Parker, a PHD astronomy student took Van Gogh’s 1889 painting, and built it back up from arguably humanity’s other most famous space portraits – those taken by the Hubble telescope over the last 20 years.
The student used computer mosaic-making software to re-produce the artwork, after cloudy weather stopped him exploring the real thing at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Or if your ears need a little interstellar pick-me-up, the Voyager’s Golden Record serves as a pretty special way to hear how one generation wanted us to be remembered to alien life forms in 1,000 million years. From NPR:
Toward the end of the summer of ’77, NASA launched two spacecraft as part of the Voyager Interstellar Mission. On board each craft was agolden record that included, among other things, the sound of a kiss, a mother’s first words to her newborn child, music from all over the world, and greetings in 59 different languages.
Wondering what Earth music would be included on an alien mixtape?
- “Melancholy Blues” performed by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven
- China, ch’in, “Flowing Streams,” performed by Kuan P’ing-hu
- Bach, Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F. First Movement
- “Dark Was the Night” written and performed by Blind Willie Johnson
- Navajo Indians, Night Chant, recorded by Willard Rhodes
- India, raga, “Jaat Kahan Ho,” sung by Surshri Kesar Bai Kerkar