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Solar tsunamis are real, say astronomers who caught the first three-dimensional pictures of a giant wave rippling across the sun. Solar physicists first saw evidence for such waves in satellite pictures of the sun taken in 1996 (pictured), but many doubted that anything of the suggested scale could really exist.

Now the twin Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft have captured an unprecedented view of a solar tsunami triggered by a sunspot explosion in February. The massive wave rose more than 62,000 miles (100,000 kilometers) high, raced outward at 560,000 miles (901,000 kilometers) an hour, and packed as much energy as 2,400 megatons of TNT.

SPACE PHOTOS THIS WEEK: Blue “Crab,” Sun Tsunami, More

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Carl Sagan sings about the universe. Features Stephen Hawking. Brilliant.

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PartiallyClips - NASA Kid

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Scientists WATCH SHARKS FROM SPACE using satellite tracking devices: http://dsc.discovery.com/sharks/shark-tracking.html

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Last year, when the Guggenheim mounted its Nam June Paik retrospective, one installation, The Moon Is the Oldest TV, 1976, stood out for being both poetic and technically refined—and appropriately so: It was commissioned by NASA. Surprisingly, this kind of collaboration between the US government’s space agency and a well-known contemporary artist isn’t all that new. For thirty years, NASA has been recruiting the likes of Mike and Doug Starn, William Wegman, Annie Liebovitz, Chakaia Booker, and, if negotiations go as planned, Mariko Mori, to create space-specific art for the NASA Art Program (www.nasa.gov/gallery/arts/index.html), which currently has about 2,000 works in its collection. Yet according to the program’s director, Bert Ulrich, the current honorarium is a mere $2,500, and artists are usually required to pick up the remainder of the production costs beyond the modest sum.

So why are so many artists so interested? “NASA is once again in the public consciousness, mostly on account of the Mars Pathfinder mission and Apollo 13,” says Ulrich, speaking of the mid-1990s film starring Tom Hanks. “A lot of contemporary artists also grew up in the ’60s and ’70s, when space-exploration themes were popular.”

At the moment, NASA requires artists to give one piece to the agency, but they are welcome to sell any additional work. The program doesn’t yet have its own gallery, but Ulrich hopes a more permanent exhibition space will be established if there continues to be a high level of interest. Some of NASA’s collection is on view at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida through 2003; some can also be found on Art Train, a roving art gallery that began touring the US in 2000.

The first NASA Web-art project, to debut in November, is being developed now by Martin Wattenberg, who had a piece in the Whitney’s recent “Data Dynamics” exhibition. “I think artists like the backdoor access to NASA. How else would they be able to chat up astronauts or witness plasma wave experiments so easily?” asks Ulrich. “Plus their work is an important means for the public to understand what our scientists are working on.”

—Reena Jana, via Art Forum

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Space Spiders Weave Tangled Web (NASA, 11/08) (via nasa1fan)

Did you know spiders can fly? Well, these orb spiders did on space shuttle mission STS-126. Once aboard the International Space Station, the astronauts noticed the spiders’ webs weren’t the elegant tapestries found on Earth. Instead, the zero-G spiders produced tangled, irregular weaves.

Oh, and in case you wonder what the spiders ate — the mission also included a tasty supply of fruit flies.

Image credit: NASA Caption credit: nasa1fan

Learn more about science aboard the International Space Station:
www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/science/index.html

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Title : Long range movie camera at Woomera, South Australia [photographic image] / photographer, W Brindle. 1 photographic negative: b&w, acetate
Date : 1956

via National Archives of Australia

Woomera Rocket Range in the South Australian desert was a rocket launch site and is now mainly an aerospace testing centre. The Woomera Test Facility is the largest test range in the world. At 127 000 square kilometres it’s about the size of England. http://www.woomera.com.au/range/range.htm

Since the 50s and 60s Australia has dropped the ball on space science. It is a national embarrassment that Australia does not have a space agency. Australia is the only OECD country without a space program. If Bulgaria can manage to have a space agency then Australia can too.

In November 2008 the Senate Standing Committee on Economics recommended Australia create a space agency to coordinate the nation’s space science efforts (Senate Committee Report: Lost in Space? Setting a new direction for Australia’s space science and industry sector)

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Astronaut Mae Jemison on teaching arts and sciences together - TED Talk

Mae Jemison is an astronaut, a doctor, an art collector, a dancer … Telling stories from her own education and from her time in space, she calls on educators to teach both the arts and sciences, both intuition and logic, as one — to create bold thinker [TED Talks]

Mae Jemison was the first African-American woman in space.

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