ageofdestruction:

lakes: Surface of Mars, photographed by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, 24th August 2008.

Detail of Tikhonravov Crater interior at 13°N 35°E. Mikhail Tikhonravov (1900-1974) was a Soviet rocket and spacecraft designer.

It appears that this is an ancient lake bed, now filled with dust. A paper by Fasset and Head groups Tikhonravov with other lakes that survived until the end of the Noachian or early Hesperian era (about 3.5 billion years ago) and estimates that it had a greater volume than the largest freshwater lake on Earth.

Image credit: NASA/JPL/UoA.

ageofdestruction:

time’s dead flowers: Surface of Mars, photographed by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, 9th November 2008.

“Streamlined features in Hooke Crater” at 44°S 316°E on the northern edge of the Argyre Planitia basin. Hooke is a 140km crater named for the 17th century British physicist, best remembered for first describing elasticity with Hooke’s Law: F=-kx.

Image credit: NASA/JPL/UoA.

ageofdestruction:

see you shake: Saturn, photographed 10 times by Hubble Space Telescope, February 2005.

Note Saturn’s polar aurora. From Proposal 10156, a study of Saturn’s magnetosphere and auroral processes in concert with Cassini. 

Image credit: NASA/ESA/STScl. Animation: AgeOfDestruction.

ageofdestruction:

long halloween: Saturn, rings, and Mimas, photographed by Cassini, 31st October 2005.

Image credit: NASA/ESA/SSI.

ageofdestruction:

what are days for?: Pandora and Saturn’s rings in minimalist mode, photographed by Cassini, 10th December 2005.

More Space Minimalism.

Image credit: NASA/ESA/SSI.

ageofdestruction:

hounds: Jupiter and Ganymede, photographed by Hubble Space Telescope, April 2007.

Ganymede is just about to vanish behind the limb of Jupiter. See also: Ganymede and Jupiter, photographed by New Horizons.

From Proposal 10468.

Image credit: NASA/ESA/STScl.

ageofdestruction:

sarabande: Surface of Mars, photographed by 2001 Mars Odyssey, 1st November 2005.

A section of Gemini Scopuli at 80°N 29°W. Layered terrain, exposed by escarpments near the north pole.

Image credit: NASA/JPL/ASU.

text-mode:

Venus de Milo, by Delaware 2005.

ageofdestruction:

tick: Neptune and Triton, photographed 5 times by Hubble Space Telescope, August 2002.

Note that Triton has a retrograde orbit, opposite to the direction of the planet’s spin. More gifs. More Neptune. More Triton.

Contrast decreased for reasons of art.

[From Proposal 9393].

Image credit: NASA/ESA/STScl. Animation: AgeOfDestruction.

ageofdestruction:

gypsy: Rings and moons of Saturn, photographed by Cassini, 31st December 2005.

Nominally a photograph of the small moon Polyduces, which is not obviously visible. Polyduces is, however, co-orbital with Dione, which could be the otherwise unidentified moon at bottom.

See also: the dark (animated)and more space minimalism.

Image credit: NASA/ESA/SSI.

ageofdestruction:

crusade: Deimos, moon of Mars, photographed by Mars Global Surveyor, 10th July 2006.

Detail of a larger image. 

Image credit: NASA.

ageofdestruction:

black page: Nominally a photograph of Saturn’s rings, taken by Cassini, 30th August 2009.

In The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, an 18th century novel by Laurence Sterne that in some ways prefigures the modernist and postmodernist literary techniqures of some two hundred years later, a single page printed in solid black is used to mark the death of a friend.

Image credit: NASA/ESA/SSI.

ageofdestruction:

luminous: Minimalist view of Saturn’s rings, photographed by Cassini, 30th December 2005.

Nominally a photograph of the moon Atlas. More Space Minimalism. 

[“Forget your perfect offering: / There is a crack in everything / That’s how the light gets in.” — L. Cohen]

Image credit: NASA/ESA/SSI.

ageofdestruction:

it dreamed of shelter: Tethys, photographed by Cassini, 3rd August 2005.

I don’t actually play Minecraft, but I watch a lot of youtube videos of it while doing other things (like this) and the other day I saw one where someone had thoughtfully included the fabled End Game Narrative. I actually found it quite touching:

“I like this player. It played well. It did not give up.

It is reading our thoughts as though they were words on a screen.

That is how it chooses to imagine many things, when it is deep in the dream of a game.

[…]

What did this player dream?

This player dreamed of sunlight and trees. Of fire and water. It dreamed it created. And it dreamed it destroyed. It dreamed it hunted, and was hunted. It dreamed of shelter.”

— Julian Gough / Markus Persson

Image credit: NASA/ESA/SSI.