Talk:Jon Lomberg

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A fact from Jon Lomberg appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on 20 January 2008.

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[edit] Abstract

Lomberg's A Portrait of the Milky Way as described in the abstract^[1] of a peer reviewed academic paper:

“In 1992, the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum opened the Where Next, Columbus? gallery commemorating the quincentennial of Columbus' voyage to the New World. The gallery examines what drives human exploration, and the options, motives, and challenges for space explorers during the next 500 years. To help the visitor understand the vastness of space and, e.g., the restrictions imposed on interstellar spaceflight by the finite speed of light, a section of the gallery is dedicated to a space-based geography lesson. For this section, the Museum commissioned Jon Lomberg to paint the Milky Way as seen from outside, to help develop the notion of a home galaxy and our place within it.

“To portray the Milky Way as realistically as possible Jon worked with the Museum's Laboratory for Astrophysics and the University of Maryland's Astronomy Program. Software was written to precisely position known objects on the canvas once the observer's location was specified. All known globular clusters, and the entire Sharpless catalog of HII regions, OB associations, and nebulae were then plotted. Spiral structure was added. The observer was then moved to dozens of different locations in search of a vantage point that would create the most visually dramatic scene. The 6-foot-by-8-foot painting that now hangs at the Museum depicts the positions of over 300 known objects as seen by an observer 60,000 light years from the galactic center and 10 degrees above the galactic plane. The Earth lives in the midst of the Orion spur, a wisp of material arcing between the Sagittarius and Perseus Arms. A 100 light-year diameter spherical volume of space centered on the Sun and containing 750 stars is smaller than a dime. The painting is the best representation of our galaxy to date, but is a first map like those of explorers long ago.”

The full text is a bit long to include even in the references section of the article. The background information it provides is both illuminating and precise, so I've put it here. — Athaenara ✉ 13:27, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Image request

{{Reqimageother}}

This is as far as I got with it:

Located LombergA1024.jpg which is specified on kepler.nasa.gov as free to use.

Intended to upload it as Image:LombergA1024.jpg to Wikimedia Commons.

Found Template:PD-NASA, Category:Milky Way Galaxy, and the right upload page.

Filled in the data as follows for Template:Information.

But I don't know how to download or upload images.

I posted on Commons:Help desk#Image upload help needed but I'm in the extremely slow lane. I hope someone who knows what he or she is doing can handle it. — Athaenara ✉ 07:19, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Postscript

After advice from Lar on the Commons help desk, I was able to upload the image. — Athaenara ✉ 06:50, 20 January 2008 (UTC)